Instead of the Thorn: A Novel

Linda could not keep her mind on Harry. She was standing in the living-room reading her letter by the twilight, and she looked up now far across the ocean. The darkness fell while she stood there and a great planet began to ascend the sky. Its brilliancy sent a narrow path across the sea. The isolation and peace were healing. A great thankfulness filled the girl that she was far from those scenes called up by her sister's letter. She wished fervently that she need never return to them. Here was peace: consolation: relief.

CHAPTER XVII

THE RAINBOW

Bertram King, in all the years she had known him, had not dwelt in Linda's mind so often as in these days. She felt aggrieved to have the thought of him thrust upon her as it had been by her aunt and Mrs. Porter and now by Harriet.

It had been a settled fact in her thought that she and Bertram could never again be friends. The mental picture of his haggard face as he made love to her on a June evening, again as he bade her good-bye before the University Club, and later, the dazed look in his eyes under her accusation in the library—all these pictures of him were a gallery apart from the remembrance of the successful man whose unspoken criticism had so often piqued her.

She thought also of that Sunday afternoon at Harriet's when he had laid his teasing admiration at her feet. She had admired him too, reluctant as was her approval. She exulted in achievement, and Bertram King stood high among young Chicago men who had achieved. Considerable jealousy had entered into her feeling for him. The words, "Bertram thinks," or "Bertram wishes," were often on her father's lips, and occasionally she had felt that she herself was gently set aside in deference to some plan of Bertram's. An unwilling secret acknowledgment of his superiority had fled in the cataclysm of her wild resentment and despair; and now that she was made to feel that she stood alone in her condemnation, and was silently condemned for it by those who loved her, Bertram's image persistently arose as something to be reckoned with.

Fairness had been the characteristic upon which, in school, Linda had greatly prided herself: fairness which excluded preferences. She had so impressed her impersonality upon her classmates that she had won a high reputation as social umpire and was often called upon to decide vexed questions. Now, therefore, she looked Bertram King's insistent image straight in the tired eyes, with her grave, severe estimate, and sustained no pricks of conscience. Time, the wondrous healer, brought her, however, as weeks went on, to raise him from the status of a mere criminal to the rank of a fellow sufferer. All the same, they could never again be friends. The thought of her wronged father, her beloved, must rise between them to the end of their lives. It went without saying that the young man must suffer, even though his pride would not permit him to confess his error. He was not a callous person. Doubtless his punishment had been heavy. Thus her thoughts would run on in the hours that she spent alone.

She was granted the boon of utter freedom. Mrs. Lindsay and her daughter Madge had essayed to be neighborly, but Mrs. Porter acted as an effective buffer between Linda and all social assaults, and as the weeks went by, slowly they brought the girl back from morbid dwelling on a dead past to recognition of the living present. She remained subdued and quiet, but elasticity was returning to her mind and body.

Miss Barry, busy about her home duties, left her niece, with lessening anxiety, to her own devices, and Mrs. Porter was careful to allow Linda to make every advance; but the steady shining of the older woman's happy personality was a magnet toward which the girl was constantly attracted and they were often together.

Blanche Aurora was also a little unconscious missionary. There was something about her youth, her intrepid spirit, stern practicality, and scanty wardrobe which continually touched Linda's sense of humor and compassion.

One day she sent for the child to come up to her room. Blanche Aurora was always glad when duty sent her to sweep and dust this apartment. The hint of violets in the air, the dainty toilet articles on the dresser, the filmy lingerie, which she put in place caressingly with her tanned hands, all bespoke the world of which she had read. She had adored Linda from the moment when unlimited chocolates had been pressed upon her acceptance, but never before had the guest sent for her to come to her room.

As she ascended the stairs, Miss Barry's "help" swiftly reviewed her own sins of commission, but decided that neglect of any duty toward Linda had not been among them. Indeed, her mistress often reprimanded her for lingering over her duties above stairs where perhaps the small chambermaid was hanging hypnotized over a wrist-watch with tiny sparkles that caught the light, or endeavoring to decipher the monogram on a handbag, or examining some other object in the fascinating room from which her round orbs could scarcely detach themselves.

To-day as she entered, Linda in her black gown was sitting by her charming window, reading.

She looked up as Blanche Aurora, conscience-free, and expressionless as ever of countenance, stepped inside and stood waiting.

The faded gingham was getting more outgrown and hueless every day. Linda wondered that her aunt never seemed to observe or care about the child's clean forlornness.

"What do you want?" asked the "help" bluntly.

Harriet Radcliffe, at this moment rowing her small son around a Wisconsin lake, would have enjoyed seeing her sister's eyes suddenly sparkle and match the little laugh that fell from her lips.

"You should say," she remarked to the small maid, all wrists and with her thin legs looking long above the sneakers she wore,—"you should say, 'Did you call me, Miss Linda?'"

"Well, you did, didn't you?" returned Blanche Aurora.

Linda regarded her for a silent moment, appreciatively.

"Are you in a hurry?" she asked then.

"If I wasn't I'd get fired," returned the "help" promptly.

Linda laughed again. "I do really believe you exaggerate," she returned. "I'm sure Aunt Belinda thinks a great deal of you."

"She knows I'm the only kind of a girl she can keep," said Blanche Aurora coolly, "Grown-up ones won't stand it."

"What do you mean by 'it,' you naughty child?" asked Linda, her eyes laughing toward the fishhook braids and the freckles. "Aunt Belinda is a very kind woman."

"Oh, yes, if you was sick she'd call the doctor, but even if you was sick you'd have to hang each rag on its own separate hook and let her smell o' the fish-pans after you'd scrubbed 'em."

"It's nice to be particular," returned Linda, laughing again.

"Huh!" vouchsafed Blanche Aurora; but her eyes, roving around the magic room, had seen something unusual.

"Good," she thought. "She's goin' out o' mournin'. I'll bet she looks pretty in them." Her round gaze cleaving to the bed saw three gowns lying there; one of blue, one of pink, and a tailored skirt and coat of a small black-and-white check.

"Do you like those dresses?" asked Linda, following her regard.

"Yes, they're real sightly."

"Come here, Blanche Aurora."

The child advanced slowly until she stood beside the black-clothed figure. Linda indicated her father's photograph in its silver frame on a neighboring stand. Before it stood a single wild rose in a small glass: a wild rose of the sea: deep in color and twice the size of its inland sisters.

Linda took one of the child's hard tanned hands in her satin-smooth one, and Blanche Aurora started and held her own imprisoned hand stiff and straight.

"Every morning when I come upstairs I find a fresh rose like that in front of my father's picture. At first I couldn't speak of it." Silence. "There are some things too precious to speak of. At last one day I thanked Mrs. Porter for the lovely thought. She said it was a lovely thought, but not hers. Then I wondered if Aunt Belinda could possibly—but one day I met you as you were coming downstairs." Silence. "Blanche Aurora"—Linda's voice stopped again.

Had Blanche Aurora been accused of highway robbery she could not look more guilty. Not one freckle was discernible in the sea of red; but her unwinking stare was fixed on the window.

Linda placed her other hand over the one she held.

"I thank you," she added.

"You gave me the candy," blurted out Blanche Aurora. "I couldn't think of anything else to do. My Pa's dead, too. He drinked, though," she added in a tone which seemed to suggest no flowers.

Linda squeezed the hard little hand and released it, to its owner's relief.

"Your mother has so many children, and so little time to sew. Have you a suit at home, Blanche Aurora?"

"What do you mean—a suit?"

"A coat and skirt alike."

"Not alike. I've got a brown skirt that was Ma's and a jacket I wear to church when it's cold. 'Tain't cold now, though. I wear a white waist on Sunday."

No suspicion of Linda's intentions enlightened her.

The girl arose and walked over to the bed and the blue eyes followed her.

"I sent to Chicago for these dresses of mine."

"I seen the big box come yesterday," returned the other, gravitating toward the bed, and gloating over the color of the fine fabrics.

"Yes, I thought perhaps I could fix some of my things for you."

"What things?" returned Blanche Aurora mechanically.

"These," indicating the bed.

Blanche Aurora gasped.

"For me!" she cried, the loudness of her usual tones restored, with a crack of excitement added. "They ain't serviceable nor durable."

Linda bit her lip. "This one is," she said, picking up the black-and-white checked skirt.

Blanche Aurora handled it reverently. "Why, Miss Linda," she said in the same high key, "how can you give away—"

"You'd better ask how can I fix them for you. I'm such an ignoramus, and yet I'm just conceited enough to try. Aunt Belinda has a machine."

"Oh, yes,"—eagerly,—"she's got a real good one. I can run it, too, if you want me to, and she can spare me."

"All right, child." Linda patted the bony shoulder. "Run along now." Her eyes had a humorous light as she observed the string woven tightly in the tortured red braids. "I'll have to do some ripping to these dresses first, and then I'm sure Mrs. Porter will help me, though probably she doesn't know much more than I do."

The child's reluctant feet drew slowly away from the bed, but not before she had laid her hand lovingly on the pink and blue gowns.

"Miss Linda," she said, looking beatifically at her benefactress, "I used to think that more than anything in this whole world I'd rather have that teeny clock o' yourn that you punch and it tells you jest what time it is; but now I don't even want that!"

Without another word she walked on clouds out of the room, and Linda went up to her father's picture, and lifting it, pressed her cheek against the cool glass.

"'Instead of the thorn,'" she murmured.

Blanche Aurora tripped downstairs, the red still obliterating the freckles on her cheeks. She was too absorbed in her daydream to observe her usual caution in opening the swing door, and simultaneously with her energetic shove a cry sounded from Miss Barry accompanied by a clattering of glass on tin.

"Blanche Aurora, will you ever remember to come through that door carefully? You knocked my arm and I nearly spilled all this jelly."

Miss Barry glared at the help as she spoke. She had just sealed a trayful of glasses and was about to deposit them on a shelf near the swing door.

"I'm glad—I mean I'm sorry!" said the culprit, her eyes still looking far away.

"Well," snapped Miss Barry, her elbow still smarting, "it would be well for you to be certain which. I was going to give you a glass of this jelly to take home to your mother, but now I think I ought to punish you."

"Yes'm," replied Blanche Aurora, gliding through the pantry into the kitchen.

Her employer caught her expression as she passed.

"Come here," she said sharply, and the little maid obeyed.

"Help me set these glasses on the shelf. Don't they look good?"

"Yes'm.—Real pink, some of 'em."

"Aren't you sorry I can't give you one?"

"No'm. Yes'm. I'm tryin' to be."

"Let them alone! I never knew you so awkward. You'll break one yet,"—as the glasses tinkled together dangerously.

Again Miss Barry scrutinized the flushed face and shining eyes above the flat-chested little figure.

"Where have you been, Blanche Aurora?"

"Up in Miss Linda's room."

"What doing? You got through up there hours ago."

"She hollered to me down the stairs to come when I got through in the dinin'-room."

Miss Barry's eyes wore their extracting expression. She wondered what form of intoxicant Linda had been administering now. The Scylla of the chocolate gorge had passed safely. What was this Charybdis that threatened?

"Well?" said Miss Barry suggestively.

"Well," returned the "help," dancing defiance in the round eyes which returned her employer's regard brazenly.

"Don't you be sassy, Blanche Aurora," warned Miss Barry.

"I ain't," answered the other; and as her mistress watched her radiant countenance, she had her first doubt as to whether Blanche Aurora was really so very homely. There were such things as ugly ducklings who outwitted their neighbors. "Has Miss Linda been giving you more candy?"

"No. Clo'es," returned the other in such a high key of ecstasy that Miss Barry recoiled and winked.

"How many times must I tell you that I'm not deaf!" she said sternly. "What kind of clothes?"

"Pink—and blue—and not worn out," was the blissful reply.

"Absurd. I can't imagine my niece having anything sensible and durable enough for a little girl."

"They ain't," declared Blanche Aurora, her eyes seeing visions. "They ain't sensible—nor durable—nor serviceable." Her smile was near-seraphic.

"Then they're not appropriate," said Miss Barry severely.

"No'm," assented the other sweetly.

Silence for a moment, then the mistress broke forth:—

"That's what came in that great package yesterday, then."

"Yes'm. She sent 'way to Chicago. She can't wear 'em 'count of her Pa dyin'," explained Blanche Aurora, with an evident tempering of grief at the loss of Lambert Barry, Esq., respected head of Barry & Co.

"Linda has no judgment!" The low vexed soliloquy was not directed at Miss Barry's "help," but she caught it.

"No, she ain't got no judgment," shrilled Blanche Aurora triumphantly, "but I bet she knows how a girl feels that ain't got anything pretty to wear, and has to go 'round lookin' like somethin' put up in the field to scare the crows."

The child's eyes glistened anew and her voice grew passionate.

"I tell you what I'm goin' to do, Miss Barry, the first day I wear that pink dress. I'm goin' to take this one,"—she plucked scornfully at a fold of the faded gingham,—"and I'm goin' to kick it into the ocean. Kick it—hard." She suited the action to the word, and the glasses tinkled again as she thumped the baseboard.

"That's very wrong, Blanche Aurora. That dress isn't ragged. Your mother mended that last tear very neatly. It would do quite well for your little sister."

"No, sir—I mean ma'am. Nobody else is goin' to have to hate this the way I have!"

"Pink," repeated Miss Barry disapprovingly. "The blue would look quite well on you, I dare say, but pink.—Don't you know your hair is red, and you'd look—"

Blanche Aurora winced. She was afraid to let her mistress go on for fear she was intending something crushing about freckles.

"I don't care—I don't care," she struck in wildly. "You don't know, she don't know, nobody knows how I love pink. Pink's happiness, pink is, whether you see it in the sky or in the roses or where! Don't, Miss Barry, don't!"

The loud voice broke, and two big tears suddenly overflowed from the round eyes and rushed down the freckled cheeks, while Blanche Aurora ran stormily through the second swing door into the kitchen.

The door swept back and forth under the swift impact, and Miss Barry stared at her jellies.

"Don't what!" she said to herself in silent amazement and injury. "Don't what!"

CHAPTER XVIII

THE PINK DRESS

Mrs. Porter was Miss Barry's prop and stay in matters regarding her niece, and she turned to her when succeeding days revealed the fact that Linda had set out deliberately to spoil the "help."

The mistress of the house left the kitchen one morning after her plans were perfected for dinner and sought Mrs. Porter. She could hear the faint buzzing of the sewing machine which lived by the front window in the hall upstairs.

She ascended with a firm tread. "This is a shame," she announced warmly, as she stood beside her friend, viewing the lengths of silky soft pink stuff which were running beneath the swift needle.

"What's a shame?" asked Mrs. Porter, without stopping her work.

Miss Barry sat down in a chair opposite her.

"That you should be penned up in the house this beautiful morning stitching away hour after hour. You were doing the same thing yesterday."

"It's fun," returned Mrs. Porter.

"Oh, fun!" scornfully. "You always say everything's fun—walking to the village when Blanche Aurora has carelessly forgotten something, going out in the rain to take in the towels she's overlooked—everything's fun with you."

Mrs. Porter smiled without raising her eyes from her fine seam.

"I don't believe you ever taught music eight hours a day," she said.

"Where's Linda?" demanded Miss Barry, but she lowered her voice. She still regarded her niece as an uncertain quantity, possibly dangerous.

"Gone to Portland."

"For the land's sake!" ejaculated Miss Barry, her tone no longer sotto voce. There was no danger of Linda's hearing from the trolley car. "What takes her there?"

"Sh!" warned Mrs. Porter, still with her gay smile. "Underclothes for the little girl, I think. I'm only guessing."

"Now, look here!" responded Miss Barry. "Where is this going to stop? I understand Blanche Aurora better than any one else does. Doesn't Linda suppose I take any care of her? She's high-headed enough by nature. She needs a strong hand, and I've held a tight rein over her on principle. She's a loud, stubborn, willful young one who thinks she knows it all."

"I'm not sure, I'm not sure," replied Mrs. Porter. "I kept her here nights while you were gone and I used to read to her in the evening—'Little Women' and 'Heidi,' and so on. She was very gentle and nice and seemed to enjoy it."

Miss Barry sighed.

"I've had her two summers with me. This makes the third. I've taught her quite a little about cooking and I've nearly lost my immortal soul doing it; and I've taught her to be neat. Yes, Blanche Aurora's neat. I ain't afraid to eat after her. I've taught her to take proper care of herself, to brush her teeth and to use plenty of soap. I give her plenty of soap; and such things are enough to give her. This!" Miss Barry picked up a fold of the soft pink and rubbed its thinness between her fingers. "Why, she'll catch it on a nail the first day and it'll be in slithers in no time, and her taste for good tough calico will be gone too."

"There's plenty of pink calico," suggested Mrs. Porter. "It's color that makes the difference to a child."

Miss Barry continued to regard the zephyr gingham gloomily. That frenzied defiance, "Pink's happiness," seemed to sound again in her ears.

"Linda's just going to fill the child's head full of notions and make her discontented," she declared.

"Perhaps she has been more discontented than you realized," suggested Mrs. Porter. "Anyway, Miss Barry," she added, stopping the machine and looking up, "I fancy we are more interested in Linda than in any one else just now. Aren't we?"

"Well, of course, we are," acknowledged Miss Barry grudgingly, realizing whither the admission tended.

"To provide her with a wholesome interest is no small matter."

Miss Barry sniffed. "I don't know how wholesome it is. Blanche Aurora's as insubordinate a young one as ever lived. I'd hate to have her think any more of herself than she does already. All these expensive clothes now, and then next winter, nothing. That ain't going to help her mother any."

"That black-and-white checked suit can be made warm," returned Mrs. Porter, beginning to stitch the hem of the pink dress.

"What started her on it, anyway?" asked Miss Barry. "'Taint a mite like anything I ever knew of Linda."

Mrs. Porter smiled at her work for a silent space.

"Linda has been born again in some ways," she said at last. "In the school of this world you must have noticed that if people's eyes are not opened by truths vital to right living, they have to learn by suffering. Linda has suffered greatly. It has softened her heart. In this little experience right here she shows she longs to do something for another: to make the lot of another happier. This humble little girl happens to be to her hand."

"Humble! Not so you'd notice it," commented Miss Barry.

"I feel as if we could just lend a helping hand and be thankful."

"Of course, I'm glad she's stopped moping," admitted Miss Barry; "but I don't yet see what started her out on this. It really isn't Linda's business." The speaker was still smarting under the invasion of what she considered her own private and particular territory.

"Oh, I'm not so sure. We are our brother's keeper after all and our little sister's too."

"It don't do them any good to make them vain," declared Miss Barry. "However," she added, "Blanche Aurora's as homely as a mud fence. I don't know as there's much danger."

"Sh! Sh!" warned Mrs. Porter.

"Oh, she's outdoors, she won't hear me."

"You ask what started it," said Mrs. Porter. "Linda's awakened observation and her desire to add to the sum of happiness might have done so, but it really was Blanche Aurora's own thoughtfulness that did it." And Mrs. Porter told the story of the daily wild rose.

"Of all things," remarked Miss Barry when she had finished. "Well, I certainly never would have thought that of that sharp little thing."

"We're none of us such sharp things as we seem," returned Mrs. Porter.

"I don't know how it is with you," said Miss Barry presently, "but I think a great deal about that poor Mr. King," and her long earrings swung in a challenge.

"I do, too," returned the other quietly.

"Linda's clothed now and in her right mind, as you might say. I think instead of dressing dolls it would be more to the point, if her heart's so soft, if she'd write that young man a letter with some human kindness in it."

Mrs. Porter looked out over the sea which seemed as ever ready to encroach on the cottage and carry it off in triumph.

"Perhaps she has done so," she replied.

"No, sir. I don't believe it," was the energetic response, earrings swinging in the strong head-shaking. "If she had, he'd have answered, and I've seen every letter that's come to her. I know his writing."

"No one sees it very often," said Mrs. Porter, stitching steadily. "I should feel much easier if he would write to me, yet I don't urge it because I won't add a straw to his burdens."

"Well, I don't see how Linda, with some of the memories she's got of her own actions, can have the heart to think of clothes instead of trying to atone for her injustice."

"We don't have to take care of that," said Mrs. Porter. "I love Bertram so dearly that I've had something to meet, to conquer resentment; but the last thing we need worry about is that people won't get sufficient punishment for their mistakes. The law is working all the time, and when we strike against it until we're sufficiently hurt we turn to the gospel: Love."

"H'm," grunted Miss Barry. "Lots o' folks don't seem to get hurt. They just go ahead and flourish like the green bay tree."

"You don't see far enough," returned Mrs. Porter, smiling, "that's all. Everything isn't finished when we're through with this world; but many times you can see the working right here."

"I'd like to," snapped Miss Barry sententiously.

Mrs. Porter finished her hem and drew the dress from the machine. It had a tucked skirt, and narrow fine embroidery edging the sailor collar and cuffs. She shook it out and held it before the other's eyes. "Pretty, isn't it?" she said.

Miss Barry made some inarticulate response, arose, and went into her own room. She had some calico in her lower drawer now, designed as a parting gift to her "help" when the summer should be over. It was stone gray with white spots.

A little color burned in her cheeks as she opened the drawer and looked at it.

"Sensible and suitable," she said to herself: "sensible and suitable. She'll be glad enough of it some day when those flimsy things are in ribbons."

It was supper time when Linda returned from the city, and as soon as Blanche Aurora had done the supper dishes she always went home.

She kept her eyes on Linda, while she was waiting at table to-night, as nearly all the time as possible; and this evening there was no change in her expression; but she too had been listening for several days to the delectable music of the sewing machine. She had even been fitted to the pink and blue dresses and she saw them in a heavenly mirage floating above dishes, washtubs, and scrubbing-pails.

To do Miss Barry justice she never allowed the child to do any heavy work, and the latter's laundry efforts were limited to the dishtowels.

From three to five every day Blanche Aurora had two hours to herself; but she was expected to remain within call and to answer the door.

She had enjoyed the high happiness, therefore, of doing some of the ripping on these gowns of a millionaire's daughter which were designed to clothe her own slight form.

The way her ears listened for Linda's call now at three o'clock of an afternoon, and the celerity with which she obeyed the voice and fled up the back stairs, every freckle on her expectant face seeming to radiate, was observed by her mistress.

All the morning of the day following Linda's visit to Portland she received rebukes from Miss Barry for slap-dashing, as that lady called it.

Blanche Aurora felt, in every one of her small but evident bones, that the pink dress must be finished. Mrs. Porter had promised her that it should be the first one in hand. She panted for three o'clock to arrive while Miss Barry gave her sundry dissertations on the wear and tear on solid silver when whacked together and the sinfulness of chipping goldbanded china.

"You know I told you," she warned, "that I bought a stock set on purpose this summer, so that I could replace everything you break and take it out of your wages. You have fair warning."

"Yes'm," replied Blanche Aurora with the loud pedal down. She was possessed by a recklessness of anticipation. What did she care for wages! What had they ever brought her comparable to the treasures, unearned, which had descended upon her from a paradise named Chicago where a Cape boy had been able to pick up a million dollars in the golden streets!

It was her experience that three o'clock did finally come every afternoon; but this day was evidently going to be an exception.

At dinner, the weather being unusually warm, Linda looked like a dark-haired angel in a plain gown of white crêpe de chine. Blanche Aurora was faintly disappointed because her quiet manner was just as usual. Surely, if her dream was to come true, and to-day was the day, Linda and Mrs. Porter couldn't behave as if nothing had happened.

Wandering about within sight of the cottage, those vacation hours were the ones during which the little girl found the perfect wild rose designed for Mr. Barry's picture. She carried it always to the room at the back of the house which was hers, and where she slept when Miss Barry wished her to stay all night.

There was a closet there, curtained off, where her waterproof and rubbers and umbrella reposed in bad weather, and a dark calico dress also hung there in case she got wet and had to change. Three hooks in the middle of the closet had lately attained significance. No human being could be cruel enough to ask another to be separated from the new dresses all day by leaving them at home. Besides, her sister Letty was almost as tall as herself. She would be sure to try on those sacred habiliments and wear them all around the neighborhood. The thought was paralyzing.

Although Blanche Aurora was quite certain several times between one-thirty and three that the clock had stopped, it did finally laboriously drag its hands around until they looked like the legs of a ballet-dancer she had once seen on a circus poster. It was actually three o'clock. She tiptoed toward the stairs. No sound.

"If I don't get the rose I'm afraid I'll forgit it," she soliloquized. So she went out the back door and around to the front of the house to a great rock under whose lee some rosebushes cuddled out of the wind. The minute she felt herself out of sight of Linda's window, however, she panted back for fear by some tragic mischance her fairy godmother might call, and receiving no answer imagine that she had gone home for an hour as Miss Barry sometimes gave her permission to do.

Finally, after much darting back and forth, Blanche Aurora secured the rose, and returning to the house, placed it as usual in a glass in her own room to wait for the morning.

As she emerged she heard her name called at the head of the back stairs.

She landed on the lower step in two leaps.

"Yes, Miss Linda," she answered, the heart under the outgrown gingham going like a triphammer.

"I want you now."

It was as the voice of an angel in the yearning ears.

"Yes, ma'am," and Blanche Aurora ascended, two steps at a time. Her dingy sneakers would not have bent daisies had they been growing upon the staircase.

CHAPTER XIX

THE WILD ROSE

As the panting little figure approached and hesitated in her doorway, Linda turned from some white stuff she had been piling on the bed and met the round, expectant eyes, "Come here, Blanche Aurora," she said. "I want to show you something."

With long steps the beneficiary was beside her.

"Here are some things I found for you in Portland yesterday."

Blanche Aurora dragged her gaze from the pink and blue dresses that were lying there, finished, and beheld white underclothing, and large enveloping aprons—a pink-and-white checked one, a blue-and-white checked one, and one all white in a satiny-looking plaid. There was also a pile of stockings and some black low shoes and white sneakers. A bride, inspecting a complete trousseau just arrived from Paris, might experience in faint degree the elation that choked Blanche Aurora now.

"For me?" she uttered mechanically.

"For you, you good little thing," said Linda. "Now take these, and go into the bathroom and put them on."

Like one in a dream, Blanche Aurora accepted the underclothing, stockings, and sneakers put into her arms, and marched toward the bathroom, her head held high and the fishhook braids quivering down her gingham back. She went in and closed the door.

Linda smiled, and seating herself in her wicker rocker clasped her hands behind her head.

Mrs. Porter came to the door.

"What did she say?" she asked, smiling.

"Oh, nothing. She's far beyond speech. What did you do with Aunt Belinda?"

"Mrs. Lindsay arrived and Miss Barry is showing her her rockery and the ferns, so I thought she was safe and I'd come up for the fun."

"You certainly deserve to." Linda sighed unconsciously. "Wouldn't it be wonderful if everybody could be made happy so easily! I believe that is the only satisfaction there is in the world, after all—making others happy, whether you are so yourself or not."

Mrs. Porter came in and took another of the wicker chairs.

"I don't believe you can avoid the latter if you do the former," she remarked.

Linda regarded the speaker, a line appearing in her smooth brow. She often suspected Mrs. Porter to be thinking of Bertram. She had no right to ask impossibilities. The superhuman should not be required of the merely human.

"It is easier said than done, though, as a usual thing," said the girl aloud. "There is one man in Chicago, for instance, to whom I owe much kindness, whom I couldn't make happy except by marrying him."

"Not Bertram," returned Mrs. Porter quickly.

"Of course not Bertram," said Linda coolly.

"It may be some relief to you to know that Bertram no longer wishes that," said Mrs. Porter, after a moment of silence.

Linda's lip curled as she kept her lazy attitude, her hands clasped behind her dark head.

"Of course not," she repeated. "Bertram may make business mistakes occasionally, but he will not commit that of marrying a poor girl."

"Linda!" ejaculated Mrs. Porter. Color rushed over her face and she waited a moment to gain control. "How can you insult him in his troubles!" she finished.

"Please forgive me," returned the girl in the same tone. "It is the hardest thing in the world for me to remember your relationship."

"Your thinking it is quite as bad as saying it."

"Be fair to me, dear Mrs. Porter. You can't blame me for not having illusions, after my sledgehammer blows."

"You can feel compassion instead of hatred, if any one has wronged you."

"That isn't human nature."

"Of course not. We have to learn that we can't have any respect for human nature. Spiritual nature is the only thing we must nurture. We don't have to take care of punishing those who have wronged us. 'Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord.' In other words, the working of spiritual law brings inevitable punishment to all who violate it. We may well exercise compassion instead of hatred to wrongdoers. If Bertram has, humanly speaking, deserved all the contempt you send him, you can well afford to feel more kindly toward him than before. Nothing but his own repentance and amends can end his punishment; and rest assured you do not need to add to it."

"Mrs. Porter,"—the girl dropped her nonchalant attitude,—"I meant it when I asked you to forgive me. If I lost your friendship I should lose the greatest treasure I have left."

"You won't lose it, poor child," was the response, as the deep color faded from Mrs. Porter's face. "You strain it when you speak so of Bertram, but I have to remember exactly the truths I have been telling you."

"That I shall be punished?"

"Assuredly, dear child—just as far as you are wrong."

Linda leaned forward suddenly and laid an affectionate hand on the other's knee.

"But I'm right, dear," she said, her eyes bright.

Mrs. Porter patted the hand in silence and the bathroom door slowly opened.

Blanche Aurora, looking very young indeed, clad in white, with white arms and neck, and tanned face and hands, stood with the old plaid gingham over her arm. Her gaze fled to the bed, then returned to the rusty plaid. So might a butterfly regard the chrysalis from which it had just emerged.

"Do I put this on again?" she asked.

"No," returned Linda. "Fold it and put it on that chair over there."

Light scintillated in Blanche Aurora's eyes as she obeyed; a light which boded ill for the faded gingham.

Linda rose and placed a chair in front of her dressing-table.

"Come here and sit down," she said.

Blanche Aurora hesitated but for an instant before complying.

"What be you goin' to do?" she asked as Linda lifted the tortured braids and inspected the white string. "Goin' to cut my hair off?"

"Do you want me to?"

"I don't care. It's only a bother, anyway. I have to braid it every few days."

"Every few days? Oh, Blanche Aurora, you ought to brush it every night."

"I should worry," ejaculated the other. "Red hair don't deserve anything like that. If I didn't have red hair I wouldn't have so many freckles and I'd look nicer in the pink dress. I pinch it good when I braid it," added Blanche Aurora savagely.

"I should think you did," returned Linda, whose deft fingers were meanwhile unbraiding the hair and removing the disciplinary string. "It is kinky enough to stuff a little mattress. You have a nice lot of it. Mrs. Porter, will you hand me that box at the foot of the bed? I'm glad I remembered to get you these." And Linda opened the box, displaying a white brush and comb which she began using on the bright hair while its owner colored with excitement through all her tan at the possession of such grandeur.

She sat silent, watching in the glass the amazing vision of Linda combing and brushing the freed locks which seemed making the most of their escape to fly in all directions and encircle the excited face with a bright aureole. Linda turned and smiled at Mrs. Porter, who nodded appreciation. Many a fine lady would gladly pay a small fortune for the luxuriant shining waves that rippled now under Linda's brush.

"I suppose your hair is straight," she said.

"As a poker," agreed its owner promptly. "I douse it good when I have to braid it over and you'd better too, Miss Linda. You can't never braid it the way it is now; and it likes to git the best of you."

The speaker eyed her halo vindictively. Her hair was an ancient enemy and only her mother's commands had protected its existence.

"When did you wash it?"

"Last week. I don't never wash it winters, but summers Miss Barry makes me."

"You don't need to wash it often in this clean place; but brush it a lot with your white brush. Will you, Blanche Aurora?"

This was a more awful demand than Linda realized. Overwhelmed as she was with benefits her beneficiary demurred.

"I can't only once in a few days."

"But you're going to braid it every day now."

"Oh, Miss Linda," was the aghast response. "I ain't got time. I couldn't! You don't know my hair. It acts as ugly as sin; jest as if it knew it was botherin' the life out of me. I have to git the children off to school—"

"Not now."

"Well, not now; but Miss Barry wants me the middle o' May, and I have to git over early—"

"Yes, but it's July now."

Blanche Aurora ceased protesting and winced.

"Oh, did I pull? I'll be careful."

"Pull it good if you want to. Good enough for it."

"You must like your pretty hair," said Linda.

"Pretty!" uttered Blanche Aurora.

Of all the surprising things that had happened to her, that adjective was perhaps the most surprising.

"Certainly it is, and it deserves good treatment."

Blanche Aurora looked in the mirror at her friend's face. Could Linda, every tiny escaping hair of whose wavy locks curled in a curve of beauty,—could she call this red stubborn mane pretty? Then there was no more to be said.

Blanche Aurora leaned back and studied the narrow trimming on her new clothes and rubbed her hard hands surreptitiously against the soft fabric of her white petticoat. Linda divided the modified waves of hair into two parts.

"Now your hair will soon straighten out," she said. "Let it stay straight and smooth and well-brushed."

"I'd like curly hair like yours," returned Blanche Aurora; "but I guess I'd pretty near die tryin' to comb it."

Linda smiled. "You remind me of the tramp who said he didn't see how folks stood it to comb their hair every day. He did his only once a year, and then it most killed him. Now, you mustn't strangle your hair with that string any more," she added.

"Strangle it! I think that's real funny," said Blanche Aurora judicially. She was radiant. There was only one small cloud on her horizon and that was the prospect of a daily wrestle with that hair. That hair! Why, angels couldn't go through it and keep their religion.

"Now, see what I'm doing?" said Linda. "You'll be glad to do this when you see how nice it looks."

With round and solemn gaze Blanche Aurora watched the braiding of first one half and then the other of her captured locks.

"Be sure to begin as near the middle of your neck as you can."

Linda swiftly doubled the two ends of the braids and fastened them.

She looked at Mrs. Porter again as the fluffy braids hung down the slender back, and again Mrs. Porter nodded.

"Miss Barry wants 'em tight," declared the child.

"Miss Barry will be satisfied with this," rejoined Linda. Then she proceeded to cross the braids and wind them around the small head, tucking the ends out of sight with hair pins. This loosened the hair at the temples and the round eyes took in the fact that the arrangement was becoming even to freckles; but the breath-taking moment was to come.

Linda opened a box on her dresser and revealed a fresh pink and a blue ribbon. She took out the pink one and soon a generous bow surmounted those braids, and Blanche Aurora gasped with pleasure. Her white, low-necked, short-sleeved reflection with the new coiffure held her happy gaze, and when Mrs. Porter brought the pink dress and slipped it on and buttoned it up, the red beneath the freckles was very deep, and the modern Cinderella was speechless.

At last she turned to Linda and threw her slender arms around her.

"I can't say nothin'," she gulped.

Linda pushed her gently back and took hold of the hard hands and her eyes were soft with an inner flame as they looked down into the glistening ones.

"I can say something, Blanche Aurora," she answered kindly. "I can say that you look like a wild rose. Do you understand?"

She put her arm around the happy girl and led her to the small table where stood her father's picture, and blooming before it, the child's offering. "Like a wild rose, Blanche Aurora," she repeated slowly.

The pink-crowned head lifted to her. "Oh, Miss Linda," she exclaimed breathlessly.

"Now, then," said the fairy godmother in a different tone, "you have a chest of drawers down in your back room; and after a while I want you to put white paper in them and come up and get these things," waving a hand toward the bed. "But first you go down and see Miss Barry."

"I'm 'most afraid," declared Blanche Aurora, wringing her hands together. "She thinks a pink dress and red hair is awful."

"She won't," returned Linda. "Run along. I think she's outdoors. Yes, I see her there, stooping over the rockery. Mrs. Lindsay has gone and she's alone."

Blanche Aurora left the room. She even forgot the chrysalis and her determination to kick it into the ocean. Seraphs, wafted on rosy clouds, forget such earthly longings.

Mrs. Porter and Linda stood at the window where they could see all that occurred, and despite Linda's assured words she was not sure that she wished to hear what would be said. Her college chums would have recognized Linda Barry again in the mischievous sparkle of her eyes.

Miss Barry, rising from her labors among the ferns, beheld a bareheaded little girl coming slowly toward her. The stranger was clothed in a pink dress with spotless white stockings and sneakers, and as she advanced the sun turned to gold the fluffy hair under a billowy pink bow.

Miss Barry pulled her spectacles down from the top of her head, and even then for a second she thought some summer boarder was straying too far from home. In another moment full recognition burst upon her.

"For the land's sake!" she exclaimed; and the two stared at one another for a silent space. It would have taken a hard heart to resist the beatified, yet shy, expression on the face of Blanche Aurora, and Miss Barry's was not hard.

"Pink's happiness. Pink's happiness!" Miss Belinda saw the statement exemplified.

"Come here, you little monkey," she said.

It wasn't so pleasant to be called a monkey as a wild rose, but Miss Barry's smile was different from any her "help" had ever yet received from her. Perhaps she liked monkeys.

Blanche Aurora came nearer, aware every moment of the fine materials touching her skin.

"Well, well, so my niece hasn't got by the doll-dressing stage," said her mistress.

The lenient tone restored confidence and unloosed an eager tongue.

"Oh, Miss Barry, I ain't a doll. I'll work just as hard. I'll work harder. I've got aprons to cover me all up and I won't break a dish nor slam the silver. The aprons is the most beautiful you ever see and these stockings they feel just like silk."

The reference to the stockings flowed forth because Miss Barry was stooping and running her hand down the slim leg.

The watchers above were edified to see her lift up the pink skirt and examine the underwear.

"You're good clear to the bone," declared Miss Belinda at last, approvingly. "Pretty sensible things, considering that Linda bought them."

The speaker rose again to her full stature and looked curiously at her maid's head.

"What under the canopy—" she began slowly. "Have you got a wig on?"

The broad wavy braids, glinting in the sun as Blanche Aurora turned her head, seemed to bear no relation to the strained tightness usual over her temples.

"No'm, it's my same horrid red hair, but I don't look at it, I look at the pink bow," was the eager response. "The kids at school was always teasin' me,"—a gulp of hurting memory interrupted the speech,—"they said I was the homeliest girl on the Cape, and it's nice for homely girls to have somethin' pretty on their heads so folks can look at that instead of at them."

"H'm," returned Miss Barry, touched by the ingenuous burst. She had never suspected her willful help of feelings. "Well, you certainly look very nice, and I'm glad that you're happy."

"Oh, Miss Barry, may I put some of the white shelf paper in the burer drawers in my room? Miss Linda told me to, and I'm to go back and get the rest o' the clo'es and and fix 'em nice in the burer."

"You're going to keep them here, are you?"

"Don't you think I'd better?" Blanche Aurora wrung her hands together eagerly.

Miss Barry took a mental survey of the child's crowded home and the small marauders who would be likely to molest her treasures. She nodded.

"Yes, that's best," she agreed sententiously, and instantly there was a pink flash, and a twinkling of white pipe-stem legs across the grass, and Blanche Aurora was not.

CHAPTER XX

BEHIND THE BIRCHES

When Linda wrote to Chicago for the dresses to be sent on, she asked the caretaker of the house to send a photograph of her mother which she would find in her dresser drawer.

The woman had been in doubt as to which picture was wanted, as there were several in the box indicated, so she had packed box and all, and it now lay on Linda's table waiting to be opened.

When the radiant little Cape girl had carried downstairs the last of her possessions and Mrs. Porter had gone to her own room, Linda turned her attention to this box.

Taking off the string she lifted the cover, and straight up into her eyes looked Bertram King. The likeness was a striking one and color flowed over her face. As she gazed, the thought came to her that Bertram must have consummated a good business deal on the day he sat for this.

There was lurking humor in the eyes and lips. It was Bertram at his best: his most prosperous. A clean-cut face, she thought, as she looked, a well-born face: intelligent, full of character and confidence.

"Overconfidence," murmured the girl, and turned the picture face down. She closed her eyes in endurance of the flood of associations the photograph had evoked, and stood motionless thus for a minute before delving deeper into the box. It held pictures of several of her friends, among them one of Fred Whitcomb. Her sad lips smiled as she encountered his wide-awake countenance.

"Good old Fred," she thought. "Some day I must write to him."

She found her mother's pictures and those of several girl friends: also one of Mrs. Porter. Some of these she left out; but the one of Bertram King went back into the box. She took one more glance at it and the veiled humor in the eyes seemed to mock her. Face down it went in, quickly, the cover was put on, and the whole placed in her closet.

At the same time her thought was contrasting the pictured face taken one year ago with Bertram's appearance the last time she saw him.

At the supper table that evening Blanche Aurora, as she waited on table, was enveloped in the white apron with satiny plaids.

"She's not a bad-looking child," said Linda on one occasion when the girl had left the room to get more biscuit. "That little turn-up nose of hers is cute and her teeth are so white."

"Those teeth!" ejaculated Miss Barry. "The time I had! But I finally taught her to keep them properly."

"Everybody knows happiness is the best beautifier, anyway," remarked Mrs. Porter. "It looks as if you would have an angel in your kitchen from now on, Miss Barry."

"Yes, 'looks,'" retorted the hostess. "Familiarity breeds contempt and I don't know how long Blanche Aurora can be subdued by her dry goods. I ought to make her put on her brown calico to go home in."

"Oh, don't, Aunt Belinda. Let her have all the fun there is in it."

So Miss Barry consented to leave her "help" in freedom; but the shrewd little brain under the fluffy red wig was working. Blanche Aurora knew about where the dividing line would occur in the bosom of her family between respect and ridicule. She felt instinctively that the limit would be reached before that crown of glory, the pink bow, should dazzle the irreverent vision of the home circle. She, therefore, when the dishes were dried, went to her room, took off the ribbon, and laid it reverently in her upper drawer beside the blue one. She gazed soulfully for a minute on the effect, then closed the drawer softly.

There was a clean towel on the bureau and upon it reposed the white brush and comb and near that a bottle of violet toilet water. Yes, the last thing the wonderful one had put into her hands was this bottle of green liquid which the child said to herself "smelled purple."

She hated to go home. A thief might break in during the night and bereave her. She lifted up the closet curtain and looked at the pretty blue dress hanging there.

Well, she thought, with firm lips, the thief shouldn't get the pink one, for she was going to wear it. Further cautious thoughts of rough, teasing brothers caused her to remove the hairpins from her braids and let them hang down her back as of old. Then she put on her new white sweater and started to run across the fields to a properly awestruck family.

A week later Blanche Aurora was alone in the house one afternoon cleaning silver. The day was beautiful, and no one stayed indoors who was not obliged to. She glanced up occasionally at the kitchen clock and saw that in half an hour she too would be at liberty to go out and get Miss Linda's rose, and hunt for four-leaved clovers.

She enjoyed finding these and placing them beside Linda's plate at the table.

"But," objected her friend one day, "I have to find them myself, don't I, in order that they should bring me luck?"

"Perhaps so," returned the donor; "but while you're waitin' I'd like to give you some o' my luck.—I got so much."

Indeed, Blanche Aurora was beginning to gain curves, and the round eyes to find expression.

She sang at her work to-day, the pink bow on her head shaking with her energy as she rubbed. Suddenly the iron knocker on the front door sent a sharp rap-tap through the house.

Blanche Aurora arose, laid down a fork, and moved through the rooms to answer the summons.

Pulling open the door she beheld behind the screen a broad-shouldered man with a bright, expectant face, and his seeking eyes saw a pink-and-white aproned figure with red hair, and a perky pink bow atop.

She was delighted at the prompt manner in which the stranger lifted his hat.

"I wonder if I have the right house," he said.

"I dunno. What house do you want?" came the stentorian response.

"What is your name, please?" asked the young man.

"Blanche Aurora."

He smiled, a nice gleeful smile. "I mean your last name."

"Martin."

"I'm sorry. I'm looking for Miss Barry."

"Oh, she lives here. I'm the help."

"Really? I didn't dream it. I thought you were the nice little daughter of the house."

"Miss Barry ain't married," replied Blanche Aurora practically, but she gave full credit to the pink bow.

"Is her niece—is Miss Linda Barry here?" The eagerness of the question and of the very good-looking visitor was fully appreciated by the little maid who recognized a kindred spirit.

"Oh, yes, she's here,"—the freckled face shone radiant. "Ain't she grand?"

"The grandest ever. I want to see her. Aren't you ever going to open the screen door?"

Upon this the screen door opened. "But she ain't in the house," replied Blanche Aurora, coming out on the piazza. "There ain't anybody in the house, so I can't leave it to hunt for her, but I can tell you where I bet she is."

"You're a good—a particularly good child," was the earnest response as Blanche Aurora's finger pointed across the field.

"Do you see that clump o' trees and then there's woods beyond?"

"Yes."

"Near them white birches you'll likely find her. Mrs. Porter and she's got a secret place."

The visitor laughed. "Secret from whom?"

"Everybody but me, I guess."

The man looked at the smile that was keeping his laugh company.

"What do you think they'll say to your telling their secrets?"

"Well"—Blanche Aurora gave a comprehensive glance at the city clothes and the gay face above her. "I kinder think Miss Linda might be glad to see you, and if she would, what's the use o' waitin'!"

"That's what I say," was the hearty response. "I can't wait. I'm going to scour this Cape till I do find her, and then if she isn't glad to see me, do you know what I'm going to do?"

Blanche Aurora's neatly coiffed head shook a denial.

The visitor grasped her small shoulder with a strong hand.

"I'm going out to that point of rock there,"—he pointed to the height of the cliff,—"and throw myself—dash myself into the sea!" He scowled portentously.

"Well, you might wait till she gits used to you," suggested Blanche Aurora. "She might like you better."

"I've been waiting two years, but your advice may still be good."

"Be you her beau?" the question was roared solemnly.

"I be; and if I don't find her this afternoon you tell her that her beau has come to town, and for her not to leave the house again till he arrives."

"All right, sir," answered Blanche Aurora, her eyes nearly starting from her head with interest as the caller jumped off the piazza and swung whistling across the field.

The soft turf was springy beneath his feet.

"'A vagrant's morning, wide and blue,'" he muttered to himself.

Gulls wheeled high over his head in the landward sallies from which they sailed back above the sea, their wings glinting like the distant

"Foam of the waves,
Blown blossoms of ocean,
White flowers of the waters."

Whitcomb strode along, the picture of Linda as he last saw her in the railway station still fresh in his mind.

Miss Barry's "help" had been galvanized into interest at the mention of the girl. She had called her "grand." It sounded hopeful.

Beyond the clump of birches, in their favorite spot, the two friends were sitting against their rock with their books and work.

Talk amounts to very little. It was Emerson who said, "Don't talk! What you are thunders so loud above what you say, that I can't hear you."

What Mrs. Porter was, had in their daily contact impressed itself so increasingly upon her young friend, that Linda, though reluctant, had, through very curiosity, come to be willing to look into the source of her friend's faith and strength. That little nook behind the birches had become dear to her. Near by rose the rich dark grove of firs and pines, the sea murmuring in their tops, and the spring bubbled with a silvery plashing.

Here Whitcomb found them. They both started at his sudden appearance and he halted, and rapped on a white birch stem.

"May I come in?" The gay, hearty voice set Linda's heart to beating fast. "Don't let me disturb you," and the visitor hurried forward, his hat off, and kneeling on the grass before her, took Linda's hand.

"You have met Mrs. Porter?"

"Once, I think," said that lady, shaking hands graciously with the young man. The devouring eyes with which he was taking in every detail of Linda's improved appearance made the older woman certain that here was the Chicago man whose happiness the girl had said she could not secure save by extreme measures.

"You look wonderful, Linda. Good for the Cape!" said Fred, seating himself comfortably on the grass, and continuing to observe her with huge satisfaction.

"But how did you know where to find us?" inquired the girl.

"Blanche Aurora told me. Happy name! Dickens himself couldn't have done better. Blanche A-roarer."

"But she didn't know about this place. Nobody knows."

"So she observed—howling it to high heaven; but you might as well try to keep a locality from the sparrows as from kids of that age."

"Well, I'm glad she did know," said Linda graciously, "It's good to see you, Fred,—you have a sort of a white, city look, as if a vacation couldn't hurt you."

"Mrs. Lindsay told me you were related to them," said Mrs. Porter. "I suppose you came through her."

"Yes, I did. I wouldn't have known there was any place to stay here except for her; and I did feel a bit seedy, as well as King, so I pulled up stakes—there being a strong magnet in this vicinity." He flashed a still further enlightening smile around at Linda.

But Mrs. Porter had suddenly lost interest in his possible romance. "Mr. King—Bertram," she said, leaning forward. "He has been ill?"

Whitcomb gave a soft significant whistle. "Rather!" he returned briefly.

"I'm his cousin, Mr. Whitcomb. Tell me all about it, please."

"I know you are. He has talked to me of you."

Linda's lips had gained the close line the mention or thought of King always evoked.

"Good old King. He's some fighter. You ought to be proud of him, Mrs. Porter."

"I am. Tell me all you know of him, please. How is he now?"

"On the upward way. He's going to come out all right, but"—the speaker cast an almost apologetic look at Linda—"you doubtless know that King was up against it for a while. It seems that one night there at the club when the strain was over, he felt himself going to pieces and he wrote me a note asking me, in case of his illness, to keep his papers—the contents of his desk—from Henry Radcliffe until he should recover."

The blood pressed into Linda's face. She was too charitable to her friend even to glance her way.

"The note was not finished. King had evidently taken the precaution to address and stamp the envelope before he began, and the last sane thing he did was to seal the letter inside it. By the time I received it and got over to the club, King was gone."

"Gone!" Mrs. Porter gasped. "You said—"

Fred nodded reassuringly toward her questioning face as she leaned forward.

"Yes, they had taken him to the hospital, you know."

"Oh!" cried Mrs. Porter, "and I here. Why didn't somebody write me?"

Linda sat erect, in an attitude of courteous attention.

"I never thought of it, Mrs. Porter. To tell the truth, I didn't know till he was convalescing that you were at all near to one another, and I didn't want to write anything to add to Linda's worries." He glanced at the girl's unmoved face.

"Did you keep his papers from Henry?" she asked dryly.

"I'll tell you about that."

"But you stayed with him—" There was a little break in Mrs. Porter's low, even voice. "You helped him."

"You bet I stayed with him, just as much of the time as my boss and the nurse would stand for. I was there every night."

"Oh, Mr. Whitcomb," exclaimed Mrs. Porter gratefully, "you don't know what that means to me. Bertram wasn't entirely deserted."

"No. Harriet was up in Wisconsin or she would have wanted to help, too. Henry kept King's illness from her; because even if she had been at home she couldn't really have done anything, you know."