The abandoned farm, and Connie's mistake

After leaving Connie, Kenneth went to say good-night to Mrs. Hart, to whom he said, very deferentially: “I know from my father how warm your house is everywhere, and I know our bedrooms are cold. So, if you don’t mind, I’ll make a fire in your room in the morning before you are awake. I’ll be very still.”

When Kenneth began to speak, Mrs. Hart gave him a haughty stare. But as he went on her countenance relaxed, and she began for the first time to notice what a fine face and figure he had, and how well he spoke.

“Quite gentlemanly for the country,” she thought, and smiled graciously, saying she did not like to trouble him herself, but she presumed Connie might be cold.

Kenneth, who would have gone through fire and water for Connie, was up by six o’clock next morning, and when Mrs. Hart awoke an hour and a half later, there was a bright fire crackling on the hearth, and her room was as comfortable as her own luxurious boudoir at home. Connie was not there. She had awakened early, dressed herself after a fashion, and gone down to reconnoitre. The deacon was going to the barn and she went with him and saw him feed Sorrel, and herself threw some hay to him from the loft above, nearly tumbling through the opening in her eagerness to look down and see him get it. She saw the young kittens and the twelve cats taking their breakfast in two pans in the barn, as it was too cold to utilize the trough outside. She saw and was nearly knocked down by the dog, Chance, who, Kenneth said, was a Russian Collie, with royal blood in him. After her first scare at his boisterous greeting, Connie had no fear of him, and kept her hand on his shaggy mane as she made the tour of the barn, inspecting everything. She tried to catch a hen which she found upon its nest in a corner. But it eluded her grasp and flew cackling indignantly at being disturbed. And all the time she was asking innumerable questions about what was so new to her.

She was always asking questions, troublesome ones sometimes, which betrayed what her aunt never intended to have divulged. Mrs. Hart had given her sundry charges to hold her tongue, but she might as well have tried to stem Niagara. Connie liked to talk, and generally expressed her opinion freely. She had told the deacon that she didn’t like the looks of his working clothes, and didn’t quite like the smell of the barn, with its cows and pigs and chickens and cats. Then it suddenly occurred to her that it was Christmas morning, and she said, “Ar’n’t I going to have a present?”

“Why, that’s a fact. You or’to have,” the deacon replied, and Connie continued: “I had a lot at home, and I’m going to buy one for Auntie any way,—one of your antiques, if they are not too high. Where are they?”

The deacon looked perplexed and asked what she meant.

“Why,” she replied, “Auntie said there were piles of quaint, old-fashioned things here, and the dictionary says quaint means antique, and Auntie likes ’em, the older and more worn they are the better. Where are they, and will two dollars get a good one?”

She was looking earnestly at the deacon, who stroked her fair hair and replied: “I guess I’m the biggest antique on the premises, and I’m not for sale. The house and everything in it is old-fashioned,—antique; that’s what your auntie meant, not that we have a lot of truck to sell; but I’m sorry we have no present for you.”

“Oh, never mind,” Connie replied. “I have heaps at home,—eight dolls and a big doll house; but, oh, my auntie said I was not to tell you that, because—” She put her hand over her mouth a moment, then, as if the effort were too great, she burst out, “what is a hunks, and are you one?”

“What do you mean?” the deacon asked again, and Connie replied: “Auntie says you are, and wouldn’t like it if you knew she gave twenty-five dollars for my doll house.”

The deacon was not at all sensitive and at once understood the situation.

“Connie,” he said, with a laugh, “a hunks, in this case, means a man who has the charge of a little girl’s money and does not want her to spend it so fast that by-and-by it will all be gone.”

“Oh, yes, I see. I’m glad it isn’t anything bad, because I like you,” Connie said, holding his hand and hippity-hopping back to the house, where her aunt, who had come down and was looking for her, met her in some dismay.

“Connie,” she exclaimed, “where have you been, and what a fright you are. Your dress not half buttoned, nor your boots either. There’s hay in your hair, and a feather, too, and you smell of the barn. Come upstairs at once and make yourself tidy.”

There were traces of tears on Connie’s face when she came down to breakfast after having been scolded and made tidy, but she kept up bravely, for Kenneth told her he was to take her for a walk when breakfast was over, and she was soon ready, in her blue cloak and hood, which the boy thought the prettiest garments he had ever seen.

“Now, show me things,” she said, drawing a deep breath. “I like it, it is all so big and free, without carts and cars and folks, and you see so far.”

The day was unusually warm for the season. The soft rain in the night had melted the snow, leaving a clear path to a ledge of rocks in a huckleberry pasture, against which a rough shed had been built as a shelter for the sheep. It was open on one side, commanding a fine view of the country for miles to the west and south. Here Kenneth took Connie, who was fond of nature in all its aspects, and expanded like some delicate flower in the warm sunshine, with the lovely panorama of mountains and hills and valleys and woods spread out before her.

“It’s just like a picture, and I like it,” she said, seating herself upon an old wooden chair which Harry had brought there with his book the summer before when he wanted to read and not be asked to do anything. The deacon had few sheep now, and as those were kept in another pasture, the inclosure was very clean and covered with grass, which looked fresh and green after the rain and the snow.

“Just the place for a Christmas tree! I have always had one for years and years, ever since I can remember,” Connie said, with the air of a woman of fifty.

Kenneth thought a moment and then replied: “Tell me what you do. I’ve never seen one, but have an idea.”

“Never seen a Christmas tree!” and Connie looked as if she thought him a heathen as she began a graphic description of the little trees her aunt had for her in the bow window of the dining-room.

Ornaments and tapers and dolls and candy and toys of every description made a most bewildering picture to Kenneth. He might manage the tree, he thought, as he glanced at a clump of pines not far away, but the ornaments and ribbons and tapers and dolls and candy discouraged him. Then suddenly he remembered the little sled in the garret, and the walnuts and butternuts and cakes of maple sugar in the pantry, and a picture-book of animals given him as a reward of merit by one of his teachers when he was a little shaver. Then there was the knife bought for Harry, and the mittens his mother had knit, and the skates his father had bought. He could put these on the tree and make believe Hal was there to get them. There had been no presents thought of for him. Everything was for Hal, but he didn’t mind. If others were happy he was, and he had all he could desire in the little girl sitting so quietly in the old chair and looking off upon the landscape.

“Connie,” he said at last, “would you like a tree here in the sheep cote, even if it didn’t have all those jimcracks? A real country tree, I mean?”

“I guess I would,” she answered, emphasizing each word with a kick upon the rounds of the chair.

“Well, then,” Kenneth said, “I think I can manage it this afternoon, but you must say nothing about it.”

Connie was accustomed to being told, “Not a word out of your head,” by her aunt. The words generally came just the same, but in this instance she kept them in, and through the dinner said nothing, nor after it, when Kenneth disappeared and no one knew where he was, although his mother thought she saw him once come from the garret and once from the pantry. To Connie the time seemed very long, with only the dog to play with. She couldn’t find the kitten, and finally stole out to the barn to hunt for it and the other cats, the most of whom ran from her and hid. She saw the pigs and threw them some apples and looked for the hen she had frightened in the morning. Then she went up the stairs, and with the pitchfork threw some hay down to Sorrel as she had seen the deacon do, and was wondering what to do next, when “Connie! Connie!” came up to her from Kenneth, who was looking for her. His tree was ready and he had come to take her to it. There was more hay in her hair and dress than there had been in the morning, but Kenneth brushed it off and the two were soon on their way to the sheep cote, where Connie went into screams of delight at sight of a pretty little pine which Kenneth had cut down and trimmed and fixed securely in its place. In front of it was the sled, its red trimmings showing well against the green background. Tied here and there among the boughs was a curious collection. The old picture-book, with a big elephant turned to the front, papers of maple sugar and walnuts, and butternuts, which Kenneth had cracked in the barn; two or three bunches of grapes and some rosy-cheeked apples; the knife intended for Harry, the mittens and skates, which Kenneth had managed to spirit away when his mother did not see him. There were also some sandwiches for the dog, who seemed to know what was going on and ran in circles and stamped his feet and barked until Kenneth called him to order and made him lie down by the chair.

That was all, but Kenneth had arranged everything so artistically that the effect was very good, especially as he had mixed with the greens a few scarlet holly berries, which he had found in the garden, and a red candlestick in which a candle was burning. Connie was eager to inspect everything. But Kenneth kept her back.

“I am to call off, and you come up as you do at home,” he said, taking his place by the tree, on which the low western sun was shining, lighting it up here and there, as if there were many tapers upon it instead of one poor tallow candle.

The sled was the first thing given, and Connie grew so excited over it that until twice repeated she did not hear her name when called for the maple sugar, which she began at once to eat, as she did the grapes which came next. The book and nuts were last, and by that time her mouth was full, and there were smears of sugar and grape juice on her face and stains on her blue cloak. But she was very happy, and better pleased than she had been at home with the costliest toys. Alternating with her name was that of Chance, who, with wonderful sagacity, seemed to comprehend the matter and sat with great gravity by Connie until his name was called. Then he went with a bound to the tree, and making short work of his sandwich walked back again to his post, waiting for the next call.

“Now, then,” Kenneth said, when the last paper of nuts was handed to Connie, “I want you to make believe you are Harry and come up for him.”

“All right,” was Connie’s reply, as she put into her mouth a piece of sugar so big that she could scarcely articulate plainly.

The knife was given out, and the mittens and the skates, and Connie put them on her sled and seemed waiting for more.

“That’s all, except the candle,” Kenneth said, while Connie’s face grew troubled.

“Ar’n’t you to have anything? Is everything for Harry and nothing for you?” she asked; and Kenneth replied, “I guess that’s about the size of it.”

“Why?” Connie continued. “Why everything for Harry and nothing for you? Is he a better boy?”

“I don’t know,” Kenneth replied. “Perhaps he is. He has always had more things than I. You see his father and mother are dead, and then he is a great deal handsomer than I am.”

“Ar’n’t you handsome?” Connie said, rolling the piece of sugar from side to side in her mouth and letting more of it run down her face and on to her cloak.

“What do you think?” Kenneth asked, with a laugh, while Connie scrutinized him so closely that he felt himself blushing to the roots of his hair. “Well?” he said, after a moment; and Connie answered, “I don’t know whether you are as handsome as Harry or not, and I don’t care. You are the bestest boy and have the goodest face I ever saw, and I love you.”

Before Kenneth could reply Connie was at his side, saying to him: “You sit down and I’ll call your name. You’ve got to have something.”

“But there’s nothing for me except the candle,” Kenneth suggested; and Connie persisted: “Yes, there is something Harry will never get,—never. You’ll see. Sit down,” and throwing off her hood and pushing back her hair with sticky hands, she stood up very straight by the tree, while Kenneth sat down and waited.

“Kenneth Stannard!” she called, and Kenneth went forward, meeting the impulsive little girl, who threw herself upon him, and, winding her arms around his neck and pressing her face against his, said: “I give myself to you!”

Just for one moment Kenneth was taken by surprise, and didn’t know what to do. Then, releasing the arms clinging so close that they nearly strangled him, he kissed the mouth besmeared with sugar and grape-juice, and said: “Thank you, Connie. You are the nicest present I could have. I shall keep you always; and now don’t you think we’d better be going home? The sun is nearly down and the candle burnt out. I’ll draw you on the sled.”

“Yes, but—” and Connie hesitated a moment. “There is something we ought to do. Have a kind of service as they do in the church, only leave out ‘miserable sinners’; there’s so much of that. Jean took me to a Sunday-school tree last year and they had carols about the ‘Silent Nights,’ and ‘Hark, the Heralds,’ and ‘Peace on Earth,’ and what they believed. We ought to say that anyway, or sing something.”

Remembering the previous night and the Stir Up collect, Kenneth began to feel very crawly, and said, “I can’t sing.”

“I can. Listen,” was the quick response, as Connie began a carol familiar to her.

But her mouth was too full of sugar to allow of much execution, and after a few croaks she stopped, a little discomfited by her failure. Brightening soon, she said: “Any way we can bow our heads and say what we believe, only you must keep me going. Begin!”

She put her hands together and dropped her head and waited while Kenneth grew more and more crawly. This was worse than the Stir Up. In the church he had always attended he had never heard the Creed that he could remember; certainly he had never learned it, and he finally said so. Connie’s head came up with a jerk, and her eyes flashed as she exclaimed: “For the pity’s sake and the Old Harry, don’t you know about the ‘I believe,’ nor the ‘miserable sinners,’ nor anything?”

“I’m afraid I don’t,” Kenneth answered meekly. “But I’m going to if I can find the book which has these things in it. What is it?”

“Why, the Bible, of course,” Connie answered, with great assurance.

Kenneth didn’t think so. He had read the Bible through, hired to do so by his mother, and he could recall nothing of the “Stir Up” in it, or “I believe,” or “miserable sinners,” except in a general way. But there was a book somewhere which had it all, and some time he meant to get it and be posted.

As he had proved so incompetent to help her, Connie gave up the service she had thought necessary, and they were soon on their way home, Connie on the sled with her cloak tucked carefully around her, and in her lap the picture-book, skates, mittens and knife, and whatever of sugar and nuts and grapes she had not eaten. It was very muddy, and part of the way was up hill, but Kenneth never minded it all, and would have walked miles with his little chatty load, who was creeping into his boy’s heart so far that it was doubtful if the heart of man could ever dislodge her.

“The bestest Christmas I ever had,” was Connie’s verdict of a day which in after years would come back to her and to Kenneth both, over and over, with a wish that what had been might be again, although they knew that was impossible.

The next day it rained and the next, and Mrs. Hart grew very restless and tired. But she had promised to stay a week, and she would do it, and then say good-by for ever to the humdrum life as it went on at the farmhouse. Connie, on the contrary, was very happy. She could not go out on her sled, it is true, but six of the barn cats had been allowed entrance to the house, and when she tired of these Kenneth took her to the ball-room, which filled her with ecstasy and set her in motion at once.

“I’ll show you I can do it,” she said, when Kenneth told her of the many dances given there when the house was a tavern and his father a boy, and that he was trying to learn. “I’ll show you,” and she went pirouetting up and down the long room, whirling like a little fairy and holding her short skirt as she had seen older ones do in the dancing class she attended. She knew a great deal which Kenneth did not know, and coached him for hours during the rainy days, proving so good a teacher that when the lessons were over he felt that he had learned nearly as much as during the whole term at Millville.

The third day the rain ceased, the air was fresher and the sun came out warm and bright. At the breakfast table Mr. Stannard remarked that one of the blinds of the Morris house had come open, and Kenneth must go and shut it.

“I, too,” Connie said, eager to go where Kenneth went.

She had looked with a great deal of interest at the silent house, which Kenneth told her belonged to Harry, and was eager to go over it. Kenneth carried her in his arms across the muddy road, and put her down inside the gate on the gravel walk, which was wet and full of weeds. The grounds were large and showed signs of former care and beauty, but were now mere sodden patches of decay. There had once been a fountain fed from a spring further up the hill, and the central figure was a little boy and girl under an umbrella. But the pipes were burst and the supply of water cut off. The basin was crumbling, and only the boy and girl stood bravely up, defying the elements and time.

“Now let’s go in,” Connie said, after admiring the boy and girl, and they went into the wide hall, with its broad stairs and wide railing of solid oak. “It seems as if the folks were all dead,” Connie said, as their footfalls made hollow sounds and their voices echoed through the great high rooms into which they had passed, the two parlors with folding doors between and a large bow window looking out upon a lawn terraced down the hill to the south.

There were handsome marble mantels and inlaid hearths and carved woodwork and signs of former grandeur everywhere, and Connie, who appreciated it all, held her breath as she went through the lower rooms and then ascended the stairs and followed Kenneth through one room after another, with here and there pieces of furniture standing in them. Young as she was, Connie’s perceptions were mature and quick, and she recognized the difference between this house and the one across the way.

“Grand folks used to live here. Where are they? Tell me about them,” she said, as they stood in what had been Mrs. Morris’ bed-chamber, where Harry was born and his mother had died, and where a mahogany bedstead and bureau, with a stationary wash-stand and silver faucet were still standing.

“All dead but Hal,” Kenneth answered, as they sat down in a deep seat of one of the windows.

“Yes, Hal. That’s Harry, who had everything on the tree and you nothing,” Connie replied. “Why don’t he live here, where there are bowls and things for the water to come in and go out, as we have in the city, and a hole in the floor for the heat to come through?”

She had spied a rusty register and was trying to open it, and her tone implied that this house was more to her taste than the farmhouse, and Kenneth felt a little hurt, but soon recovered himself and told her of the times, as he had heard of them from his mother, when his Uncle Morris lived there with his wife, a frail, lovely young girl who, knowing nothing of the world as her husband knew it, could not keep pace with his ideas and shrank from the gay company with which he filled the house.

“He had the best horses in the country for the men to ride,” Kenneth said, “and packs of dogs to hunt with in the fall, and my aunt had a maid and a nurse, who wore a cap, with great long strings, for Hal, until she died.”

“Oh-h!” Connie said, “that was splendid,” her natural love for luxury coming to the surface. “And your aunt died in that bed, and Harry was born in it?” she continued, walking round on three sides of the bedstead and stroking it with her hands, while there awoke in her heart a kind of pity for Harry, who, by the death of his mother, and something in his father, she couldn’t quite make out what, had been obliged to leave this handsome home for the farmhouse, where there was no mahogany furniture, no nurses with caps and streamers and no maids.

“I’d like to see Harry,” she said. “I wonder if I ever shall, and if I should like him as well as I do you. Give him my love, and say I’m sorry for him.”

“Sorry! Why?” Kenneth asked, and something in his tone made Connie look up quickly before she replied. “Sorry that his folks are dead,—his pretty mother and his father, who must have been a gentleman like those in New York,—and because he had to leave this handsome house.”

Kenneth was really hurt now. Here was flunkeyism he had not expected.

“Connie,” he said, in a voice not quite like the one which had called her to the tree, “would you rather live here with Harry than across the road with me?”

Connie thought a moment, and then replied: “You see, I’d like the nice things over here, but I don’t know Harry, and I am sure I like you the best and would rather be where you are. Do you think you can draw me on the sled this morning?”

She had made a rapid descent from the sentimental to the practical, but Kenneth was satisfied, and promised a sled ride in the afternoon, which was undertaken through the mud and over stones, until they ran into a rut and the sled was overturned, depositing Connie on the grass and soiling her blue cloak till, what with the mud stains and the sugar stains and grape juice, Mrs. Hart declared it spoiled and fit only for the old clothes man, who would get it as soon as she returned to New York.

That night there came a letter to Kenneth from Harry and, at Connie’s request, he began to read it aloud. Harry was much elated with his visit, and was having “a jam up good time,” he wrote, whereupon Connie, according to her habit, asked what “a jam up good time” was, and if it were like what she was having. She was promptly silenced by her aunt, and Kenneth read on, seeing far ahead, and skipping here and there when he came upon dangerous grounds for strangers’ ears. Connie was listening with rapt attention, and a growing interest in the boy who was in clover and his native element, among swells.

“What is clover? And what are swells?” Connie asked, but her auntie told her to hush, and that both terms were slang.

Then Kenneth continued reading in substance that Hal didn’t get up till nine or ten o’clock, unless he chose, and that “a fire was made in his room every morning by a nigger, which was O.K.”

Connie opened her lips to ask what “O.K.” meant, but her aunt shook her head, and she jotted it down in her mind to be hunted for in the dictionary later on, with “jam up!”

Harry went out to ride or drive every day, he said, with Tom, and when on horseback a “nigger” went with them to open the gates if their road was through the pastures. He had been to Versailles and Frankfort, and many times to Lexington, as Cedar Bank was near there. He had also been out into the country to Morrisford on the river, named for his ancestors, who used to live there, and where his father was born.

“It isn’t any great,” he wrote; “not half as fine as Morris Place at The 4 Corners must have been, and shall be again, if I live; but fine places here don’t count as they do with us. It is blood, and I’ve got a lot of it on father’s side. Why, when he was a boy, before the war, the Morrises had shot one or two people in a quarrel and had a hundred niggers! Think of it! and a few of the old ones are still living round there in log cabins, working some and stealing more, folks say. There’s an old auntie,—Aunt Polly,—who looks like a mummy. She was owned by my grandfather Morris. He was a colonel. I didn’t know that till I came here. In fact, I didn’t know what good stock I sprang from, and, I tell you, I feel proud that I am a Morris. Aunt Polly was my father’s nurse, and when they told her who I was she nearly strangled me with her black, skinny arms. Called me Mas’r Harry; said she was ‘Mas’r Charles’ ole mammy, and nussed him from a baby.’ I tell you, I felt big, with Tom Haynes standing by and hearing it all. There were more darkies in the Aunt Polly line, who came pressing up, with their ‘How dy’s,’ and ‘God bless you, mas’r,’ and ‘Has you a bit of backy?’ This was from a baboon, who might have been a hundred, and who claimed to be a Morris ‘bawn and raised on de ole plantation befo’ de wah,’ in which he said he took a part,—on which side I didn’t ask or care. As true as you live, I began to have a fellow feeling of relationship to these niggers, and feed every mother’s son of them. Tom said it was the right thing to do, and as I didn’t want to seem mean, I gave out right and left till I had only fifty cents left in my pocket, and, Ken, I must have some more by hook or by crook——”

Here Kenneth, who saw breakers ahead, broke down with a cough, while Connie chimed in, “What is ‘by hook or by crook’?”

“More slang,” her aunt whispered to her, and Connie put it down in her mind to be hunted up with “O.K.”

As Kenneth continued to cough, Mrs. Hart felt sure that the rest of the letter was not for strangers’ ears, and left the room, taking Connie with her.

“I don’t believe I ought to have read as much as I did,” Kenneth said, when Mrs. Hart was gone, “but Connie wanted to hear it, and I got at it and couldn’t very well stop. I did skip some, but hear what he says:

“You see a gentleman and a Morris can’t visit in a gentleman’s house without money to spend, and ten dollars was a paltry sum any way, when you consider that it is my own, or will be when I come of age. I tell you what, Ken, Uncle Eph must shell out ten more at least and send me. There must be that much due me; if not, tell him to loan it and keep it back from my next allowance. I can skimp at home, but not here, where they look upon me as a sort of millionaire. I’m awful glad Tom did not go home with me as he proposed doing. When I’m of age I shall fix up the Morris Place and invite him there with some more bloods, and perhaps I’ll have some of Aunt Polly’s brood as servants, and, by George, why not have Aunt Polly, too, if she is alive? An old family servant like that, who has been a slave, would add éclat to my establishment; don’t you think so?

“I suppose Connie Elliott is with you now, as you wrote she was coming. Just for a minute, after I got your letter with uncle’s consent for me to come to Kentucky, I half wished I was going home to see her, but am glad I came here. Tom has a sister, eleven years old, pretty and shy, and will some day have quite a fortune from her father and her aunt, who lives in Louisville, and has no children of her own. Think of her sending fifty dollars to the Haynes family, to be spent as they like for Christmas presents. That’s the kind of an aunt to have when your pocket is empty, like mine. Give my regards to Connie and write me if she is pretty. Get ten dollars for me somehow.

Several times during the reading of the letter the deacon had moved uneasily in his chair, crossing and recrossing his legs, and twice going to the door to spit. He did not like the tone of the letter. Neither did his wife. It was the Morris blood cropping out, and they had seen too much of that when Charles Morris lived across the way and tried to lord it over his neighbors. They remembered his fast horses and hounds and carousals, and remembered the white-faced girl who died when she heard of his dissipations when he was away from The 4 Corners. They remembered, too, that with all his faults, there was a smooth exterior and a pleasant way which took with people, and Harry had the same and had made them love him almost as their own. His father was a spendthrift, but had left enough to supply every reasonable want of his son when it was looked after as carefully as the deacon looked after it. Ten dollars had been thought ample for his spending money at Cedar Grove, and here he was asking for ten more.

“I s’pose we must get it somehow,” he said. “The Morrises were high steppers, and I dare say the Hayneses are the same, and Hal wants to keep up his end; but I don’t like the way he wrote, as if he was lookin’ down upon us because he is a Morris. Great Scott! his father was a villain, with all his polish and blood, and if he had lived he’d spent every cent he was wuth. The dog! I knew him!”

The deacon was a good deal excited, and in the letter which he sent to Harry next day, with ten dollars, he told him not to make a fool of himself because he was a Morris.

“The Morrises are well enough,” he wrote, “but, Lord Harry, that isn’t all. It needs something besides being a Morris to make a man.”

Kenneth said it to Connie with a swelling heart, just a week from the day when he first saw her at the station, in her blue cloak and hood. Mrs. Hart had stayed her allotted time, and had felt that each day she stayed grew longer and more tiresome. She had impressed upon Connie that, although the country might be nice in many respects, it was not a desirable place in which to stay, or to visit very often, and Connie was about equally divided between her love for the city and country. She had had a “jam up good time,” she said, remembering Harry’s letter, but before she could get farther, her aunt stopped her.

“You have learned a great deal of slang,” she said; “more than you will forget in a year. You have spoiled your blue cloak and two pairs of boots, besides romping quite too much with the cats and the dog and Kenneth. You are too familiar with him. I heard you ask him if he was never going to hear your prayers again. What did you mean?”

When Mrs. Hart assumed this tone and manner, Connie always succumbed, and she now told her aunt of that first night, when Kenneth heard her prayers, and that since then she had always asked a blessing on him, the “bestest boy in the world.”

“Yes, Kenneth, is a good boy,” Mrs. Hart said, “and when you get home you may send him a prayer-book. I dare say he never saw one. There is no church here.”

“Why, yes, there is,” Connie replied. “There is one close by, where Kenneth goes, and all of them. Haven’t you seen it?”

“Oh, the meeting-house. That’s different,” was Mrs. Hart’s reply, while Connie looked puzzled.

She had been puzzled a good deal of the time since she came to the country, and had learned many things she would not soon forget, and she was sorry to leave. But there was no alternative. They were going in the morning, and she bade good-bye to the cats and the cows and hens and Sorrel, but reserved her farewell to Chance for the station, as Kenneth said he was to go there with them. There had been one long sled ride in the mud and what little snow there was, and Connie had told Kenneth she would love him forever and ever, and that she was to send him a book with “I believe” and “Stir up” and “miserable sinners” and everything in it, and he was to read it through and know more the next time she saw him.

And Kenneth promised everything, and felt his heart grow heavier as he listened and remembered that to-morrow she would be gone, and probably that was the last of Connie he would see for years. She told him her auntie would invite him to New York, where she would show him things, not like cats and hens, but the Brooklyn Bridge and a ferry-boat. Kenneth had not much faith in being asked by Mrs. Hart to visit New York. He had read that lady pretty well, and guessed how glad she was to leave them and how little chance there was for him to see Connie often.

Mrs. Hart thought herself a very good woman, who tried to do her duty religiously. She had spent a week at the farmhouse and been treated like a queen, and was grateful for it, and meant at some future time to send a present to each of the family in token of her appreciation, but when Mrs. Stannard asked about Arnold’s in New York, and if it wasn’t the best place to buy a black cashmere such as she had in mind, and said she’d often thought she’d like to see the big stores, Mrs. Hart did not seem to take the hint. To shop at any fashionable place in New York with Mrs. Stannard was impossible, or to have her for a guest. She could give her the cashmere, but she could not help her buy it, or invite her to New York. Kenneth had been very nice to her and Connie, and she would send him something besides a prayer-book,—a silver-backed clothes-brush and possibly a manicure set. She had noticed that his hands were rough and his nails not what they should be. Perhaps he would not know what it was, but that other boy might. He was a Morris, and different. This was Mrs. Hart’s reasoning on the morning she made her preparations for leaving. She had had a very pleasant, restful time, and they had been so kind to her, she said to Mrs. Stannard, who was secretly hoping for an invitation to spend a few days in New York. There were several things besides a black cashmere which she would like to get, and she wanted to see the big city. But no hint that she was expected was given when Mrs. Hart finally said good-bye.

Connie had wanted to take her sled with her, but this her aunt had forbidden, as she did the taking of a kitten when Connie proposed it. She would not mind having Chance, she said, patting the beautiful dog, who was keeping close to Connie as if he knew she was going. “He would be splendid for the sea-shore next summer.”

But the dog was not for sale, the deacon said, and then it was time to go if they would catch the New York train. Kenneth went to the station with them, and felt as if his throat would burst when the last good-bye was said and Connie’s bright face had disappeared in the car which was taking her away “forever, I am afraid,” he said to himself, as he drove back to the house, which seemed so empty and still.

The little muddy sled on which he had drawn the child many a mile was standing on the front doorstep, and he took it to the pump and cleaned it and carried it to the garret and hung it away reverently, sadly, as we put aside some article the dead have worn. As he came down the stairs he met Chance, holding something white in his mouth, and shaking his head and stamping his feet, his way of attracting attention. It was one of Connie’s handkerchiefs, used on Christmas Day, and left in the inclosure to which Chance, on his way home from the station, had made a detour. It was stained with sugar and grape juice, but Kenneth washed it at the pump as he had the sled, and taking it to the garret, spread it over the sled to dry.

Two days later there came a letter from Mrs. Hart, telling of her safe arrival home, and saying Connie was well and sent her love and a prayer-book to Kenneth. It was a very handsome edition, and on the fly leaf Connie had printed in big letters, “To Kenneth, from Connie.” She had wanted to add, “with love,” but her aunt objected. So she printed on a piece of paper which she put in the book: “With Connie’s love, and you’ll find ‘I believe’ and ‘stir up’ and ‘miserable sinners’ and everything in it.”

Kenneth read it through, and began, in a dim way, to understand what was done in churches like the one Connie attended, and the following Sunday he drove to St. Jude’s in Rocky Point, a distance of six or seven miles. He had seen but little of the world, and the pretty church, with its three or four memorial windows and candles on the altar, seemed a great contrast to the primitive building at The 4 Corners, where there was seldom even a flower to brighten it. The candles puzzled him, as he could not see why they were needed, when the sun was shining brightly. He was interested in the vested choir, in which he recognized one or two boys who attended the Millville Academy with him, but thought it would take a great deal to make him march with that white gown on, as they did. He was seated near the door, where he could see everything, and as he had brought his prayer-book, he tried to follow the service, succeeding pretty well, and finding the “I believe” and the “miserable sinners,” but failing in the “stir up.” It was all very new and very strange, but it was Connie’s church, and must be right, he said to his father when, on his return home, he told what he had seen and heard.

“All ceremony,” the deacon said, shaking his head. “All ceremony, except the ‘I believe’ you talk about. That’s our creed, too, though I don’t think it has been said in Sunday-school in years. It ought to be, and I’ll speak to the superintendent to have the children learn it. That’s all right, and the rest may be. I won’t judge too harsh. I wasn’t brought up that way, but I’ll see to that creed.”

As a result of the little mustard seed Connie had sown, the children in the church at The 4 Corners, and the grown people as well, were in a few weeks rehearsing what they believed in a manner which would have been highly satisfactory to Connie, could she have heard them. Kenneth’s voice usually took the lead, and there was always in his heart a thought of the little girl, and the prayer she had said, with her head in his lap, and the Christmas tree by the ledge of rocks, sacred to him now as the church itself, because Connie had been there and told him of things he was learning to understand.

Three weeks after Mrs. Hart’s departure there came an express package from New York directed to Mrs. Stannard, who, never having received one before, was in a state of great excitement until it was opened, and greater still when she saw the contents,—a dress pattern of black cashmere, finer and more expensive than she would ever have bought for herself, with all the linings and trimmings and directions how to have it made. There was also a silver-backed clothes brush for Kenneth, but the manicure set was omitted. These, Mrs. Hart wrote, were presents from Connie, who had been greatly interested in buying and sending them. They were going South for February and March, and she would possibly go abroad in the spring. This was late in January, and some time in February Kenneth received a newspaper from Jacksonville announcing the arrival of Mrs. Hart, niece and maid at the St. James, while the deacon received a few lines from Mrs. Hart, asking that Connie’s quarterly remittance be sent to St. Augustine, and that it be as large as possible, in order to meet the increase of expenses. The money was sent and a receipt returned, and then for years the chapter of Kenneth’s life, as connected directly with Connie, was closed.

Fourteen years is a long time to look forward to, but looking back it does not seem very long, since Kenneth bade good-bye to Connie, and hung her sled in the attic, with the stained handkerchief drying upon it. The sled is hanging there still, and the handkerchief is lying in one of Kenneth’s bureau drawers, yellow and soiled, for no water has touched it since he washed it at the pump and put it away to dry. The prayer-book shows marks of constant usage, and Kenneth goes regularly to St. Jude’s, which to himself he still calls Connie’s church. He has worked his way through college, and at his graduation no one stood higher in his class than Kenneth Stannard, the boy from The 4 Corners, who swept the halls and did many menial offices to help himself along.

Connie has been at the farmhouse but once since her first visit there, and that was in the summer eight years after the memorable Christmas, and when she was fourteen and Kenneth twenty-two. He had dreamed of her coming night after night, and always saw her in her blue cloak and hood, as she had been when he bade her good-by. He knew there must be a change, but was not quite prepared for the slender, dignified girl, who wore an enormous hat and called him Mr. Stannard. She was, however, inexpressibly lovely, he thought, with her flower-like face and great blue eyes, which laughed when she laughed, but oftener drooped shyly under long, thick lashes. But for the eyes, and the smile which lighted up her whole face, Kenneth would hardly have recognized in her the little girl of six whom he had drawn for miles and miles through slush and mud. Did she remember it, he wondered, and the Christmas tree? If she did, she made no sign, and he would not refer to it, or tell her that he knew the contents of the prayer-book now as well as she did. She could only spend a day, or a part of it, as her aunt had left her at the station, while she went on to Albany to visit a friend, and was to call for her in the evening. She was very sweet and gracious, but a little too dignified for her years, Kenneth thought, as he tried to entertain her.

“Would you like to go to the huckleberry pasture?” he asked, after dinner was over.

“Oh, yes,” she said, with the old eagerness of manner, and they were soon on their way to the spot where they had once had their Christmas tree.

It was no longer used for sheep, for the deacon had none. But Kenneth had kept the place up, and when the old chair fell to pieces he made another, in which he sometimes sat on Sunday afternoons, reading Connie’s prayer-book.

“Oh, I remember this place so well,” Connie said, sitting down in the chair, and drawing long breaths as she looked off across the stretches of woods and valleys and hills, bright in their summer robes and bathed in sunshine.

Kenneth was standing where the tree had stood, leaning on a timber which supported that side of the inclosure, and Connie thought what a fine face and figure he had, and felt a faint stir of something she could not define, as she met his eyes fixed so earnestly upon her.

“Tell me of your college life,” she said. “I was so glad when I heard you had gone. Was that cousin of yours there, too, and where is he? You know I have never seen him.”

Kenneth was glad to talk of his own college life, which had closed that summer, but had nothing good to say of Hal, who from Andover had entered Harvard, spending money so recklessly that the deacon had refused to meet his bills. There was lark after lark, as Hal called them, until at last there was one too many, and the deacon was notified to take the young man home, if he would prevent open disgrace. Hal came home, good-natured and silver-tongued as ever, and half made Mr. and Mrs. Stannard believe that the fault had been with the professor, who misunderstood him, and with his companions, who had let him take the blame in which they should have shared. He was of age now and in Boston, pretending to study law and coming home occasionally for a day or so, to be waited upon like a prince by his Aunt Mary, who always went down before his dark eyes and soft, musical voice, which seldom failed to stir the heart of women. Kenneth could not tell this to Connie, but he told her Hal had been in Harvard, and was now in Boston studying law, and then the conversation drifted away from him to Kenneth himself, Connie asking what he meant to do, now he was through college.

“Stay here on the farm?” and her voice implied that she thought he might do better.

Kenneth detected the tone, and answered quickly:

“Not on the farm, perhaps, but here in the country, as an M.D. I am to study medicine with Dr. Catherin at Rocky Point. He is the greatest doctor in these parts,—is sent for far and near for counsel. You’ve heard of him, perhaps?”

Connie believed she had, and was glad that Kenneth was to be with so eminent a man, and hoped he would become as celebrated. She certainly was a little stiff, and remained so the rest of the day, until they were on their way to the station, just as the sun was setting. Kenneth had proposed driving her down, but she insisted upon walking, the evening was so fine, and she wanted the exercise, she said. For a time she was very silent, but when they were half way down the hill, near a bit of broken wall, she said: “Let’s sit here and rest.”

The full moon was rising, and threw a flood of light on her face as she turned suddenly to Kenneth, calling him now by that name instead of Mr. Stannard, as she had done through the day.

“I must call you Kenneth for once,” she said. “I wanted to all the time, but you seemed so big and so tall, with whiskers, and the boy Kenneth’s face was so smooth, and I thought maybe you wouldn’t like it, and I am fourteen, and must drop all my childish manners, auntie says. She tells me to be womanly, and not say out all I think and feel, and I do try to, and I have been trained into a kind of automaton; but it’s so hard, especially here, where I haven’t acted myself. But don’t think I’ve forgotten, for I haven’t. I remember the week spent here, and know I was a very pert, forward child, asking questions I ought not to have asked, and telling everything I knew. Don’t stop me,” she continued, as Kenneth began to protest. “I know what I did, and am ashamed of some things, but was so happy with the cats and in the barn and on that sled, and at the Christmas tree. Oh, that tree! How many times I have dreamed of it, and of the boy who gave everything and had nothing for himself.”

“Yes, I had,” Kenneth interrupted eagerly. “I had you! Don’t you remember? You called me up and gave yourself to me, and I said I’d keep you forever!”

There was a good deal of the woman in the young girl of fourteen and the bright color flamed into her cheeks as she replied:

“I was a child, and did not know any better. I have taken it back.”

“No, Connie. Don’t do that,” Kenneth said, impulsively, and laid his hand on hers.

For a moment Connie’s clear blue eyes looked at him with something like rebuke in them; then, with a toss of her head, which made her like the Connie of the sled, she said:

“It isn’t worth having. I am not what I was then. I have been moulded and trained till there is but little left of the Connie you used to know, though in some things I am unchanged. I told you you were the ‘bestest boy’ and had the ‘goodest face’ I ever saw, and—and—I think so still.”

The moon was shining full upon her, bringing out every point of her beauty, and Kenneth might have stooped and kissed her, as he did when she first told him her opinion of him, had it not been that just then the mail carrier from the post-office at The 4 Corners came down the hill:

“Hallo!” he called, stopping suddenly as he recognized Connie, who he knew had been spending the day at the farmhouse, and was presumably bound for the train. “If either of you is goin’ to the cars, you haven’t much time to spare. Better climb in here.”

“I must not be left. Let’s get in!” Connie exclaimed, and they were soon driving rapidly to the station, which they reached just as the train came up, and Mrs. Hart’s face looked from the window in quest of Connie.

There was only time for a hurried good-by, and then the train sped on its way, and Connie was gone for a second time.

Time passed, and news came that she had gone abroad and was in France, in a convent school, and the following autumn Kenneth entered the office of Dr. Catherin at Rocky Point, proving himself so apt a student and exercising so good judgment that before he was graduated the doctor gave him a part of his large practice. After his graduation he opened an office in Millville and another at his home at The 4 Corners, where the people were very proud of their young M.D. And Kenneth was a man to be proud of, whether as a citizen or physician or son. He was not exactly handsome, as we understand the term, but he had just the face which strangers trust, and which sick people like to see at their bedside. With his tall figure and fine physique, he was a man to be noticed among scores of other men, and one of whom Connie would say that he had more than the “goodest” face in the world, if she could see him now. She has been his guiding star, and not an honor has ever been conferred upon him that has not brought with it a thought of her and a wish that she knew. In the stable are two young horses, necessary for his practice, and he calls them Pro and Con, the latter being as near Connie’s name as he dares to come. She is a graceful, high-strung, nervous animal, full of capers and quirks, and rebelling against being hitched to a post, and usually running away if she is not. Pro is gentler and more quiet, and will stand unhitched for hours, while his master is visiting his patients. And yet Kenneth loves Con the best, and pets her the most, and talks sometimes to her of the Connie far away, whom he would give worlds to see, and from whom he seldom hears.

When Hal came of age, and the management of his property was turned over to him, he found everything straight to a penny, but was disappointed that his fortune was not larger. With his tastes and habits he wanted a great deal of money, and he spent a great deal, and would have borrowed of Kenneth, if his cousin would have loaned him. Once he offered to mortgage his house, but Kenneth refused, with the result that there sprung up a coolness on Harry’s part, and for a long time he neither came home nor wrote. Then suddenly he appeared one day, gracious and good-natured as ever, delighted to see the old place, proud of Kenneth’s success, and very affectionate to his aunt. Kenneth felt sure he had something in his mind. “Only wait and it will come out,” he thought, and that night, when they were seated upon the piazza, enjoying the cool breeze, he told them what he wanted.