The Little Grey House

"Here's the doctor," cried Prue, and a long sigh of relief went around the tense room. "He has driven over without a hat, and brought Bart with him."

Dr. Fairbairn entered, bringing with him the feeling that now all must be right, which always attended that great man. A great man he was, since he easily footed up his seventy-four inches of height, huge in proportion, and with a heart and brain big out of proportion even to his immense bulk. He was one of those men without worldly ambition, yet afire with zeal, who are sometimes found ennobling the profession in small communities. Past sixty, Dr. Fairbairn had seen Sylvester Grey born, and still regarded the girls as his babies. Now he entered the troubled group, kindly, sympathetic, business-like, strong to comfort and to save.

"What are you up to, now, Sylvester man?" he said, walking straight to his patient with a brief nod for the others.

"I don't know, doctor; it's all over now, anyway; I'm sorry they bothered you," said Mr. Grey.

"Don't be foolish, boy," said Dr. Fairbairn. "How were you taken?"

"Fearful pain just over the heart, in the chest, and all down the left arm. Then I felt suffocating, and the agony got unbearable; I really thought I was dying." And Mr. Grey gave a little apologetic laugh.

"Yes. Been working hard, thinking hard?" asked the doctor.

"The machine is almost done, doc. I have to work hard, and it takes all my thought. You can't realize—it means comfort, luxury maybe, for Mary and the children," said Mr. Grey, speaking rapidly and pulling himself erect.

"I didn't ask you all that. I see: concentration, nervous excitement, close application," muttered Dr. Fairbairn. "Go over there and lie down and let me hear your heart through this thing." The doctor led Mr. Grey to his lounge, and placed his stethoscope to his chest.

In a few moments he wound the tubes together and pocketed it again. "Now, look here, Sylvester Grey, is there any use in my giving you orders, or are you going to do precisely as you please anyway?" he said.

"I'll mind you if I can, doctor, but you know my health is nothing in comparison to what I have in hand. After a few months I'll take as good care of myself as you like," said poor Mr. Grey.

"That shows the uselessness of injunctions," said the doctor. "But now is the time to take care, not later. Avoid over-exertion and excitement; work moderately, don't over-do, and work calmly, then you may stave off similar attacks."

"And if I don't do this?" suggested his patient.

"You are certain to suffer this way again," said Dr. Fairbairn.

"Is there danger?" asked Mr. Grey.

"There is grave danger; it is your duty to avoid it," said the doctor.

Mr. Grey turned his face to the wall. "It is my duty to finish the machine and provide for my family," he murmured. "My life would be well spent if it purchased them peace."

"There is little peace to be had in the loss of the one we love best, Sylvester," said Miss Charlotte, who alone had caught his words, seating herself on the couch and beginning to stroke the weary head of him who had been her favorite playmate.

Mrs. Grey and her daughters, who had stood silently, breathlessly, listening to this conversation, now followed the doctor to the door.

"Tell me, Dr. Fairbairn," said Mrs. Grey.

"Angina pectoris, Mary, my dear, if that sheds any light on your darkness," said the big man, smiling down upon her, and, as she shook her head, he added: "It is an affection of the heart often found where there is no organic disease. It is dangerous in repeated attacks, and is not infrequently quickly fatal." Dr. Fairbairn did not approve of professional deception unless it was necessary.

"And so Sylvester is in danger?" Mrs. Grey almost whispered.

"Yes, Mary; over-work, over-excitement increases his danger," replied the doctor. "But no one can tell more than that. We are all in danger; we know of his—that's the main difference. Try to make him go more slowly."

"Thank you, Dr. Fairbairn," said Mrs. Grey.

"Now, don't begin bearing a sorrow that has not come," said the doctor. "That was never your way. I'll send you the remedies you must use another time. Be of good courage, Mary; but there's no need of telling you that, you plucky little heroine." And with a tight clasp of the hand Mrs. Grey mutely held out to him, and a pat on each girl's white cheek, the big doctor was gone.

Mrs. Grey closed the door behind him and held out her arms. Her three children sprang into them, and the mother held them close in a convulsive embrace.

"We'll take care of him, Mardy," whispered Rob, with something clutching her throat.

Mrs. Grey pushed open the dining-room door and drew the girls after her into the room where the Rutherford boys had retreated to await the verdict. Mrs. Grey sank into the chair nearest her and laid her head on her arms above the table with a girlish movement of abandonment. Basil, grave and kindly, bent over her and put his arm across her shoulder as if to ward off grief. Bruce stroked the fine brown hair of the bowed head with awkward gentleness, and Bartlemy hovered helplessly in the background, making no secret of the tears on his brown cheeks.

The girls knelt beside her, Prue's head in her mother's lap. "Don't, Mardy darling," said Wythie at last; it seemed so horribly unnatural for their brave mother to break down.

"See, Bruce, what you must do if you become a doctor," said Mrs. Grey, raising her head and trying to speak cheerfully. "You will have to tell people alarming truths, and go away knowing you have left behind you stricken hearts, for which you have just changed the whole face of creation."

"I would rather remember the comfort I may be able to bring," said Bruce. "Is it so bad?"

"Unless Mr. Grey will give himself the care which we are sure he will not feel that he can afford to give, he is in mortal danger; he is almost certain to have more of these attacks—angina pectoris, it is—and they are—are likely—Oh, my dears, just be patient with me a few moments! I will be brave later, but I must be a coward for a few moments, please dears!" And once more the head bent under its burden upon the folded arms.

Miss Charlotte came into the room, calm and smiling, and went directly to Mrs. Grey. Taking her hand in one of hers, and running the fingers of her other hand through Prue's golden hair, she said, brightly: "Mary, dear, Sylvester is sleeping beautifully; he will waken refreshed. I know precisely what the doctor told you; I have seen angina pectoris before, and I recognized it. But we are not going to be cast down—only very careful. Dearest children, you are so frightened, aren't you? Remember, you must cheer your mother. Wythie and Rob, go make us your very best coffee. And Prudy-girl, dry your eyes, and cut us bread very thin, and butter it. And perhaps 'Battalion B' won't mind helping the girls with the fire—I'm sure it's nearly out. Now, Mary," she added, as the young people disappeared, and Mrs. Grey rose and threw herself on her cousin's breast, "courage, dear! Only your old courage re-enforced. There is danger, but we are going to be confident of escape. Go bathe your dear face, and then come back for your coffee, and when Sylvester wakens he will find the cheery Mary Winslow, who has tided him over so many hard spots. I think I hear Kiku mewing; perhaps we shut him in the sitting-room. Will you see when you go up?"

"Charlotte, Charlotte," cried Mrs. Grey, holding the blind woman fast for a moment before she obeyed. "In all the world there never was another such a comforting, sustaining, heaven-sent creature as you are!"

Miss Charlotte listened to her cousin's footfall on the stairs with a tender smile of satisfaction; she well knew the value of homely tasks in a dark hour, and that their resumption made tragedy seem impossible.

But left to herself Cousin Peace's smile faded; she dropped wearily into the chair Mrs. Grey had vacated, and, leaning her head on her hand, allowed the tears to gather and drop into her lap. The hope that she must maintain in others it was hard for her to feel. Her cousin was so frail, his life so far removed from the lives and interests of other men that it was easy to imagine it ended. He was certain to continue to work with the same feverish, excited eagerness until his patent was completed, and the doctor had said——

"Here is the bread, Cousin Peace, and the coffee is nearly ready," said Prue, entering, much more cheerful than she had gone out.

Miss Charlotte started up, with her own bright smile. "And I, for one, am quite ready to drink it!" she cried.

Mrs. Grey came back, smiling also, Kiku on her shoulder. "He was shut up, Peaceful, dear," she said, "and complaining bitterly of being forgotten through dinner-time."

Rob brought in the steaming coffee-pot, followed by a procession of three tall boys, each carrying something, ending with Wythie bearing the cream.

Mr. Grey pushed open the door just wide enough to admit his head. "Do I smell coffee?" he cried. "And would you have defrauded me?"

"You are to have hot milk, Sylvester," said Miss Charlotte.

"Oh, how do you feel, Patergrey?" cried Rob, springing to his side.

"I'll have nothing of the sort; I'll have a cup of this fragrant brew," declared Mr. Grey. "I feel all right, Rob, my son, only a trifle lame. I am sure the doctor exaggerated the case, though I confess I wouldn't have thought anything an exaggeration of it while it lasted. This bread and butter tastes uncommonly good! Rob, my son, can I borrow you after this repast is over? I need your help on a special bit of work for an hour."

"Oh, come now, Mr. Grey!" protested Bruce Rutherford, involuntarily.

"'Vester, I implore of you, not to-night!" cried his wife, in such distress that, as the girls added their voices to the chorus of frightened protest, Mr. Grey looked from one to the other, and visibly weakened. But Miss Charlotte clinched matters.

"You have no moral right to disregard Dr. Fairbairn, and the warning you have had, Sylvester Grey," she cried. "Besides, you are to take me home, and I am going to keep you to tea. I want to see you quite alone, but Wythie and Rob shall come for you, and bring you home in triumph."

"Well, one man against so many of the earth's rulers," Mr. Grey began. "Boys, won't you stand by me?"

"No, sir; not if you want to work to-day," said Basil; while Bruce added: "I'm beginning to think they rule the earth because they're better fit to do so. No, sir; we're on their side."

"You're beginning to cater to their love of flattery, you young humbug," said Mr. Grey. "Well, if I must yield, I might as well yield gracefully."

And later Miss Charlotte bore him away, leaving more hope behind her in the little grey house than had seemed possible three hours earlier.

CHAPTER EIGHT
ITS MAKESHIFTS

As day followed day, with no return of the cause of their anxiety, the Greys began to breathe more freely. If Mrs. Grey felt less confident than the children, she hid her fears, and the girls rejoiced with the buoyancy of youth in their rescue from the great sorrow threatening them.

The autumnal equinox had passed, Prue had resumed school, and beautiful brooding days of golden sunshine, with their lengthening evenings, and the first touch of the cosey, shut-in feeling winter brings were resting over Fayre. Rob's brow did not match the brooding peace of nature. Over and over, with growing desperation, she said to herself: "I must earn money, I must earn money, but how?" Mr. Grey had thrown caution to the four winds—if he could have been said to have any to throw—and was working madly on his invention by day, and dreaming of it by night. Rob was in constant requisition to help him; she shared her father's excitement, and began to believe, with renewed faith, that they were on the eve of entering the land flowing with milk and honey. But the eve was dark and long, pointing, of course, proverbially to the nearness of dawn, but hard to live through.

The disaster the Greys had feared had befallen them; there was a temporary reduction in their income—so slender at best—owing to something going wrong with a railroad, in the queer, and, to feminine minds, mysterious ways investments have of behaving. It would be righted again one day, but in the meantime the reduction took the practical form of cutting down the simple family rations, leaving nothing for anything beyond necessities, very literally construed, and putting the Greys on a basis that really was, as Prue said, discontentedly: "Poor folksy." And Wythie and Rob did need winter coats so sadly! Their old ones were so shabby that Rob said she "was colder with it on than without it, for its whitened seams and many worn spots gave her chills."

"I give you fair warning, Wythie, I'm going to commit a felony," said poor Rob, coming home from a walk and trying to laugh as she tossed her hat on the old "nurse," as they called the shabby but comfortable couch which had cuddled them all as babies. "I feel a felony coming on, and it's as drawing as a felon."

"What form is it going to take, Rob?" asked Wythie.

"Stealing," said Prue, promptly. "I know I wanted to break in Roger's window to-day and take the chocolate eclairs he had put there—they looked perfect dreams, and were as fresh! Or else you want to fib," she added, thoughtfully. "No, though; you're not tempted as I am. It is simply awful when the girls ask you why you don't do this, or why you don't get that. What am I going to tell them?"

"The truth, that you can't afford it," said Rob, stoutly. "You might as well, for everybody in Fayre knows everybody else's affairs just a little better than they do themselves, so everybody knows we're poor—poor as pudding-stone rock. But there's one comfort; they all know, too, we're not every-day, pasture pudding-stone, but real old Plymouth Rockers, so mere money doesn't matter much—except to us. I don't suppose—since Mardy isn't here—there's any use in our pretending we don't mind the present pinching state of our finances."

"Our history lesson yesterday was on the way Alexander Hamilton made banks and money out of nothing but his country's debts, almost before it was a country; I wish I knew how he did it," observed Prue, pensively.

"You haven't told us what form you felt your felony would take, Rob," said Oswyth. "Where does your moral felon hurt you?"

"I feel twinges all over, my dear Anglo-Saxon messenger," said Rob, airily. "In my feet when I look at my shoes, in my fingers when I put on my old gloves, or, worse yet, mittens instead of gloves, such as most fair maidens wear, and in my stomach when I try to make it believe an egg, some creamed potatoes, and a rice-pudding are porterhouse steak. But it's reaching a climax on my back. I must have a winter coat, and so must—a muster must—you, my patient Wythie. To-day when I came past the rectory—St. Chad's rectory—the lady rectoress had hung out her three daughters' three new winter coats, fur-trimmed, O my sisters, and beautiful to behold! I am going to break and enter that house in the dark of the moon, and steal those coats."

"I hope if you're caught your punishment will be banishment from Fayre, or I don't see what good your felony will do you—you can never wear the coats," laughed Wythie, and then she sighed. "It's hard, Robsy, but bear up, my boy! You believe this is our last hard winter."

Rob shrugged her shoulders. "Of course, but it's also the only one we're living through this year, and next year's dinners aren't sustaining—or, at least, you can't help weak moments if you live on them," she said. "Here comes our Aunt Azraella. She is stopping in the back yard to examine those two underskirts you sewed that lace on, Wythie. She is estimating its cost and disapproving of it at a high rate of pressure. I wish she would come around the front way, even if it is farther! What with the bleaching grass, the clothes-line, and the pantry window, the back way is dangerous to a critic born."

"Rob, you're a villain!" said Wythie, trying to pull her lips straight.

"You've time for a little laugh, Oswyth; she's delaying now at the blind I mended—neat job, Mrs. Winslow, ma'am, though I say it who shouldn't," remarked Rob. "As to being a villain, it's lucky I am, for unless a body's a saint like you—and you may have noticed I'm not— Aunt Azraella might embitter one unless she were handled with a lightly humorous touch. Eyes right! Shoulder arms! She comes, the Greek—a freak?—she comes!"

Wythie and Prue looked flushed and shaken as their aunt entered, but Rob met her with the solemnity of a Holbein portrait, or as nearly as nature had allowed her rippling face to attain that standard.

"Good-morning, girls," said Mrs. Winslow. "I hardly have time to sit. Where's your mother? It doesn't matter; don't call her. I came on an errand."

"She's decided to waive the skirts; think how much nicer they'll look with that lace on them when they're waved," whispered Rob to Wythie, who choked as she gave her sister a remonstrant pinch.

"What I wanted was to borrow one of you girls to help me take down the old parlor curtains and put up my new ones," said Aunt Azraella. "Elvira has a bad knee, besides, she's busy, and I sent Aaron away on an errand. Oswyth, will you come?"

"I will go if you like, but Rob is better at such work," began Wythie.

"I have to help Patergrey," "I would rather have you," said Rob and her aunt, speaking together.

"Auntie and I are mutually agreeable to your going, Wythikins," said Rob, smiling gaily into her aunt's face.

"I'll go," said Wythie, rising hastily; she was always nervously afraid of what might happen when Rob and their aunt collided. "Do you want me now?"

"Certainly; it gets dark too early to lose a minute," said Mrs. Winslow. "Get your hat and jacket and come right along."

Oswyth obeyed. It was a pretty walk up the hill to Mrs. Winslow's from the little grey house, but Oswyth did not enjoy it, for her aunt seized the opportunity to question her as to the Greys' domestic affairs, "because," she said, "Mary was so shut-mouthed," and to point out to the young girl how straight they were headed for destruction. The girls did not visit more frequently than duty demanded the hill-house which would have been so pleasant to them if their uncle had not left it too early for them to have known him. Oswyth entered it now with the chill it invariably gave her.

Every chair sat prim and straight in its own place against the wall; it made one shudder to imagine what would have been the consequences if in the night they had taken to playing "Going to Jerusalem" with one another.

The light was carefully excluded, and, warm and soft although the air was out of doors, the house held a deadly chill in its atmosphere.

Books—proper compilations, selections, and poems—lay in austere firmness, each on its own spot on the bleak plateau of the marble-topped centre-table. A clock that had not made a new record of time in sixty-one thousand three hundred and twenty hours, pointed stoically to ten minutes to five from its position precisely in the middle of the parlor mantelpiece, flanked on either hand by a grimly resolute bronze warrior.

On the chair nearest the door lay the new curtains, dark blue, heavy material, folded neatly and piled on one another. The old ones, which had been pretty, green-corded silk, hung in their places at the six windows; even in the dim light they had abandoned all hope of concealing the fact that they were badly faded, and displayed their yellow streaks with hopeless candor.

At the sight of them an inspiration came to Wythie which nearly took her breath away. What was Aunt Azraella going to do with those old curtains?

Aunt Azraella laid aside her lingering sun-hat with a manner—for her—actually sprightly. "I'll get the steps, Oswyth, and you might be shaking the new curtains out of their folds and putting the pins in," she said. "You'll find new pins in that box on top of the pink china vase. Turn the curtains down to the depth of this card across the tops—all but two pairs. They have to be turned slanting, because they go at the end windows, where the floor has settled. But there! You can't do much while I'm getting the steps." And Aunt Azraella stepped away with a certain crisp decision which was her way of hurrying—Aunt Azraella never flustered.

Oswyth obediently shook out the curtains, and had laid the new upholsterer's pins on the table, separating them into detached rows, like so many brass grasshoppers, by the time her aunt returned with the step-ladder hung gracefully on one arm, the other slightly extended for balance. Before her walked Tobias, the tiger cat, so called because of his fishing proclivities, and who, so far from being spoiled like Kiku-san, was staid and serious, relegated to the kitchen and Elvira's society, and only suffered in the parlor under special conditions and surveillance, like the present.

"I'll take the old ones down, aunt; I can run up and down the steps more easily than you," said Wythie, taking the step-ladder from her aunt, and testing its iron brace as she set it before the first window. Mrs. Winslow began to stick pins into the obdurate new material, marking the amount to be turned down by keeping the card she had notched against it with her left thumb, holding the while a second brass grasshopper between her teeth, ready for use. Wythie unhooked the old pins from the rings and let the faded curtains droop, eagerly planning the while, and wondering if she could get her courage to the begging-point. "I don't think," said gentle Wythie to herself, "I do not think that we can be forbidden to covet our neighbor's goods when they are so very old and faded."

At last all the old curtains were down, and the new ones up in their place. Wythie had patiently climbed up and down the step-ladder, skilfully avoiding Tobias, who liked to sit on the second step from the top; had altered pins, and supported the heavy material while Aunt Azraella altered; her natural desire to please increased by her resolve to be bold and dare when all was done. And when it was done she had something of her reward, for Aunt Azraella actually patted her on the shoulder, and said: "You have been very helpful, Oswyth. I was wise to insist on having you; Roberta would never have been so patient and thorough."

"I am glad if I have been useful," Wythie said, rather faintly.

"It seems a pity not to use those old curtains for something," said Aunt Azraella, whose mind was on the order of Mrs. John Gilpin's. "But they are too faded for any purpose, and too big to make it worth while sending them to New York to be dyed."

"I wonder if you would mind—Aunt Azraella, might I have them?" said Wythie, with desperate courage—it was nearly impossible for her to ask for anything.

"You, Oswyth! What on earth could you do with them? You can't mean to get your mother to dye them for curtains for your house? You don't need curtains," said Mrs. Winslow.

"I don't want them for curtains, Aunt Azraella; I want them for winter coats," said Wythie, more boldly, now that the first plunge was made. "Rob and I are too shabby to go out when there's a moon—not to mention sun. And Mardy could dye this material, and it would be warm and pretty. If you don't need them, aunt, they would really do us a lot of good—we would make the coats, you know."

Mrs. Winslow stared wonderingly, then she gleamed approval at Wythie, though she felt called upon to conceal it. "There are thirty-six yards here, fifty-four inches wide; do you think you need so much? And it seems a pity to divide it," she said.

"Oh, no; I've no idea what it would take, but not that—still, they would have to be lined, and Mardy could dye half another color, and line with the same," stammered Wythie. "I didn't think you'd care, but if you do I'm sorry I spoke—I did not mean to ask for anything you wanted."

Having reduced Wythie to the properly humble frame of mind, Mrs. Winslow relented. "I did not say I wanted them, Oswyth," she said. "Thank goodness, your uncle, my husband, left me enough, besides all I had from my father; he was a thrifty man, and a good business-man, your Uncle Horace. I don't need old curtains, I hope. You may take a pair home—if you can carry them—and ask your mother if they can be used as you think, and how many she needs—you may have all you want of them. I'm glad to see you practical and managing; you've got the Winslow faculty, and aren't a Grey, as I'm afraid Roberta is. I'll get you paper and twine. Go across the orchard, Oswyth; don't let folks see you taking my curtains home. Can you carry them?"

"I'll carry them, aunt; never fear, and I'll not let a soul but ourselves know where we got our splendid winter coats," cried Wythie, gleefully. And in the exuberance of her pleasure she actually kissed her aunt with an affection that really belonged to the new coats, but which surprised and pleased Aunt Azraella as if it had been her own—as indeed she thought it was.

She let Wythie out of the door in a high state of satisfaction in her own generosity which had made the girl so happy, and watched her run down the hill with a speed her heavy bundle could not at first retard. But she had to go slower at the foot of the hill; only by repeatedly sitting down on her treasure to rest, and by dragging and tugging it with both hands between halts, did she succeed in reaching the door of the little grey house.

Roberta saw her coming, and had the door open as Wythie laid her heavy burden on the steps. "What in all the wide world have you there, Wythie?" cried Rob.

"Our—winter—coats," panted Wythie, very warm and short-breathed.

"Honestly?" cried Rob, joyfully. "I thought Aunt Azraella had given you her old curtains."

"So she has, and they are our winter coats," said Oswyth, preparing to take her bundle into the house, but Rob forestalled her by seizing the twine, and she carried the treasure, bumping against her knees, to their mother.

Mrs. Grey laughed over Wythie's project, but pronounced it feasible. "You will have to let me dye them black, girlies," she said. "I would never risk all those faded stripes coming out one shade of a color. But we'll make the lining red—defects won't show there—so they shall not be sombre. I think I have some fur in the Golconda which will go around the necks, and make them really sumptuous."

"The Golconda" was the chest in which Mrs. Grey stored her remnants of better days, and which was to the girls a mine of richness, furnishing them with their few luxuries of toilet.

The kettle and the witch-stick came forth, and the kettle boiled and bubbled, and Mrs. Grey toiled and troubled to good purpose, for the handsome material of the old curtains came out a beautiful glossy black.

Mrs. Grey cut and basted, and Wythie stitched the new coats with feverish impatience for the result, and Aunt Azraella came over to see the trying on.

"Really, Mary," she said, moved almost to enthusiasm as their mother revolved Wythie and Rob by their shoulders, displaying a success exceeding her own hopes, while making chalk notes of improvements—"really, Mary, you are wonderful! You might be a tailor. It is marvellous, brought up as you were."

"My bringing up explains it, Azraella. Mother believed in teaching her children to use their hands and wits. I'll tell you, Azraella; it's that Plymouth strain you so venerate. The Pilgrim mothers wove and spun, and my tailoring must be a case of pure heredity," said Mrs. Grey, laughing with a girlish mischievousness that rarely found expression. Wythie and Rob were just beginning to be old enough to realize that their mother was young.

The coats were finished, and really were triumphs. Aunt Azraella was so pleased with her curtains for turning out so creditably to her that she actually produced from the treasure-house of her attic, which the girls longed to ravage, handsome buttons to adorn the coats, and enough rich velvet for hats for all three nieces. Wythie made jaunty little muffs from the material of the coats, and behold, from being shabby, she and Rob were transformed into an external splendor that enabled them to look their sister maidens in the face with equable minds.

But aside from this windfall matters grew worse, rather than better, in the little grey house. Everything that they could deny themselves the Greys went without. Prue rebelled against her childish fare of rice and molasses, and declared her eyes were growing almond-shaped from over-indulgence in that celestial and nuptial grain.

Rob sang her a pleasing extemporaneous ditty about

Prue looked less pleased with the ditty than she might have been, and Wythie, "the olivebranch," as Rob called her, said, hastily: "We've a Japanese kitten, so we oughtn't to mind being just a trifle Mongolian, Prudy. Come here, Kiku-san." For Kiku-san was wearing his most serene and sanctified expression, and that look usually preceded his breaking something.

"Prudence, mavourneen, the Grey dawn is breaking," sang Rob, with immense expression. "And you know it is always darkest before dawn. Just wait—only wait a little while longer, my child, and Patergrey will compress all our troubles with his coal-dust, and consume them forever. Wait for the machine, Goldilocks."

But away down in her stanch and loyal heart Rob could not help feeling that it was weary waiting.

CHAPTER NINE
ITS BURDEN

"Poor and content is rich and rich enough, but poor and genteel is—pardon slang—most tough!" remarked Rob, looking over her shoulder as she knelt before the oven, and making a wry face at Wythie, unconscious of the streak of soot on her chin.

"If you could be but one, which would you rather be, poor or genteel, Rob?" laughed her mother. But there was little laughter in the eyes under a brow upon which increasing anxiety was daily making its record.

"I don't know, Mardy; I'm not sure I could tell them apart. I'm like the ladies in Cranford, and have always known them together, but vulgarity would have its consolations. We shall be vulgarly rich when the bricquette machine is in the market," said Rob.

"And in the meantime?" hinted Wythie.

"Ah, in the meantime!" Rob took her bread from the oven and pulled herself on her feet by the aid of the lid-lifter, conveniently extending its handle from the back lid of the stove. Mother and daughters looked sadly through the open door into the dining-room and sighed. The sunshine struck the mahogany tea-table, with the clover-leaf corners of its dropped leaf; on the old mahogany sideboard, with its rounded ends and slender, straight legs and glass knob-handles, and on the old pewter tankards and platters, and the blue and white china standing upon it.

The Greys' troubles had reached a crisis; there was immediate and imperative need of ready money, and Aunt Azraella had been over on the preceding night "to talk common-sense" to her kindred-in-law.

"It's ridiculous," that Spartan woman had said, "for people situated as you are to have so much money tied up in old furniture. Here are these things—sideboard, table, chairs, pewter, old china; there are those old bureaus, the high-boy, the tester-bed, the bookcases, the work-tables—you have two—the old desk, not to mention the various chairs and tables scattered through the house. Even a dealer would give you a great deal for them, though private sale is better. But you cling to them, and won't part with them either way!"

"They are not only the delight of our eyes, Azraella; they are heirlooms from both sides. Some of them have been in the little grey house for more than a hundred years. How could we part with them?" Mrs. Grey gently replied.

"Necessity knows no law," Aunt Azraella answered, in one of those convenient pellets of wisdom always ready compounded for infallible persons to administer to the weak-minded. "I'll tell you what I will do, Mary. I will take the things off your hands at a fair appraisal, and give you cash down."

Mrs. Grey did not thank her; she had long known that Mrs. Winslow coveted the beautiful and venerable treasures of the little grey house, and longed to transfer them to her more pretentious, black-walnut-infested house on the hill. So Mrs. Grey did not feign gratitude for her offer; indeed, it inspired her with a perfectly natural desire to hold her splendid old mahogany at any cost. She said, firmly: "I shall not part with these things while we can exist without doing so, Azraella," and Mrs. Winslow had departed in highly disgusted dudgeon.

But now, regarding their treasures in the clear morning light, and without Aunt Azraella, the Greys wondered if their decision had been wrong, and it was their duty to give up those precious belongings which seemed more really kin to them than many of the animate connections transmitted to them through dead-and-gone ancestors. Two alternatives stared them in the face: to sell the furniture, or mortgage the little grey house. Thus far the dear little old home had been as free from burden as in its first building, when a Grey had hewn its walls from the forest with his own hands, and dug its cellar, and piled its stone foundations from the rocks of its own meadows, helped only by the friendly hands of other pioneers. It was not possible to regard a mortgage upon it calmly; for sentiment's sake in the first place, and then because its interest would be a continual burden long after the ready money it had given them would have been changed into the necessities of life.

"Still, Mardy," Rob began, speaking out of the thoughts they were silently exchanging, after the fashion of people who live in loving sympathetic intimacy—"still, Mardy, the mortgage could be paid off when the bricquette machine is sold, but if we gave up the furniture it would be gone forever. The mortgage is dreadful, but it gives us another chance, while the sale would not. We shall need money only a little while longer, you know, if everything goes right."

"Oh, Rob, Rob, and if everything goes wrong?" cried Mrs. Grey, the cry wrung from her by the sudden sharp realization that her lares and penates, her home, her husband himself, threatened to slip from her forever.

"Then I will take the bricquettes' place—I am sure I am combustible enough!" cried Rob, but neither her mother nor Oswyth could smile.

Aunt Azraella came over again after dinner to renew her appeals to common-sense and for the fulfilment of her own desires. There was another conclave of elders, and Wythie and Rob, feeling the strain too great upon their nerves, escaped into the October sunshine. They came upon Frances Silsby under escort of Battalion B, coming to seek them, and half-heartedly consented to a short row on the river in the boys' long-boat, which they had christened "The Graces," because, they pointed out, it was equally appropriate to "the trio of owners and the most frequent and honored guests."

"You don't look cheerful to-day, you Grey sisters," said Basil, shipping rowlocks and oars and pushing off.

"No; even Rob is downly," said Bruce, coining a new adverb. "Is it anything we could help?"

"Not unless you are bankers," said Rob, disregarding Wythie's signals for silence. "What's the use, Wythie? France has known us ever since we were here to be known, and these new friends are just as true ones. We're having grey days without gold—that's all."

"We could be bankers," said Basil, quietly. "We have more money than we use—we big, strapping boys—and that's what makes us so sorry and ashamed when we think of girls like you being bothered."

"We said the other day we wished you would let us be your bankers—it would only be till the machine was done," added Bruce, flushing. He did not say that they and Frances, whose father was the wealthiest man in Fayre, had vainly tried to hit upon a way of making life easier to the girls of whom they were so fond.

Rob shook her head with a dubious smile, and Bruce said, hastily: "Oh, I know you won't! There's always just that difference between a girl's friendship and a boy's. A boy not only will share with his chum—girls do that—but he will take his share of his chum's possessions, and know it does not matter which happened to have more."

"Don't you think there has to be that difference, Bruce?" asked Wythie, in her womanly little way. "You wouldn't like to have a girl accept too much from another." Wythie did not say, "From a boy friend." "Since Rob has said so much I will tell you that you could not be our bankers, for we need too much, and it is too serious. Aunt Azraella, Mrs. Winslow——"

"Who has nothing whatever to do with soothing-sirup, nor sirup, nor soothing of any sort," interrupted Rob.

"Wants us to sell our dear, beautiful old china and pewter and mahogany. But we won't—we can't!" Wythie finished.

"Of course not; I should say not!" ejaculated silent Bartlemy, the artist, with profound conviction.

"It would be like selling 'the ashes of your fathers and the temples of your gods,'" added Basil.

"Yes, and leave us worse off by and by, when we had used the money," added Rob. "But if we don't do that we must mortgage the little grey house."

"That's bad, too," said Bruce.

"It's worse than you see at first, because it means keeping up the interest, besides lessening the value of the old place," said Rob. "My brethren and sister Frances, I must earn money."

Frances clasped the hand Rob held out to her, and patted it silently. Her pretty, happy face had grown distressed; she had loved Rob as a superior being since she had been taken by her nurse to see Rob's collection of dolls, and she fully realized how bitter it was to all the Greys to put a burden upon the home which always seemed more like a member of the family than its shelter.

The Rutherfords rowed on in silence awhile, then Bruce squared his shoulders and threw back his head with a cheerful smile for the girls. "Well, if you must mortgage, don't worry about it. Everybody has a mortgage—they are as common as family cats. And when the machine is done you can pay it off again, and that will be in a short time. It really isn't worth talking about," he said, cheerfully.

Rob gave him a grateful look. "That's what I say, Bruce!" she cried.

"And isn't it great that your father has no more heart attacks?" added Basil, desiring to contribute his underscore mark to some item of cheer on the page of life the Greys were at present conning.

"It's wonderful, too," said Wythie, "for he works as hard as though Dr. Fairbairn had never warned him—but he doesn't look well."

"I think you can earn money, Rob; I think I know a way for you to do it," said Frances. "I've been wondering if it were possible, and I'll talk to mamma to-night—it needs her help—and then to-morrow I'll come to talk to you about it."

"So cheer up, Grey sisters; this is your last pull," said Basil.

"I wonder if it is," said Wythie, watching the strong, steady strokes as The Graces sped up the river under Basil and Bartlemy's rowing.

"Oh, no; there's Indian summer to come; we'll row lots of times this year, and all next season. I did not mean this kind of pull," smiled Basil.

"I know. Where are you taking us?" asked Wythie; she could not bear just then to hear an allusion to another year.

"Up here to a tree which we discovered yesterday, and which other little boys haven't discovered—it's full of chestnuts," said Bruce.

The boat glided toward the right bank, crowned by flaming maples, and into a narrow creek, so narrow that the boys had to draw in their oars and pull The Graces along by the shrubs on either hand. They stopped directly under a great chestnut-tree, and Bruce cried, pointing triumphantly to the branches crowded with opening burs: "There! Isn't truth more chestnutty than fiction?"

"Why didn't you tell us?" asked Rob, reproachfully. "We could have gone back for something to put them in."

Forgetting poverty for the moment in the riches provided by nature and autumn, Wythie and Rob climbed cheerfully over the side of the boat, and taking off their jackets began filling them with chestnuts as eagerly as if they had been squirrels dependent upon them for their winter existence. There was little time to get many of the satiny nuts, for the Greys were impatient to learn the fate of the little grey house, and to console their mother, who would need consolation for whatever decision had been reached. Regretfully they turned their backs on the wealth of nuts and the beautiful, peaceful spot, with its gorgeous colors, and damp, delicious odors.

Bruce and Bartlemy rowed down. Frances was very silent, and held Rob's hand fast; Rob did not feel like talking, and Wythie was never a chatterbox, so the party came down the river very quietly, all thoughts centered on the same point—the Greys' difficulties. As they drew up at the little pier which the Rutherfords had built for their landing-place, Basil said, breaking a long silence: "Wythie and Rob, I want you to give us your solemn promise that if ever you think we can be of any use or comfort, you will say so. I don't believe you understand what it has been to us to have you girls take us right into the little grey house and big Grey hearts, and treat us like one of yourselves. It will be downright unkind if you shove us off now, for the first time, and don't let us have the privileges you've accustomed us to. Brothers are not meant only for bright days, you know."

"We would ask you to do anything, Basil; of course we would," said Wythie. "There is nothing to be done now."

"But you will consider us comrades of the true sort; not the kind you like only for what you can do for them and to frolic with," persisted Basil.

"'Ere's our 'earts and 'ere's our 'ands," said Rob, melodramatically laying her left hand on her heart and extending her right. "Seriously, boys," she added, "we understand, and we'll do just what you want us to. We're going to regard you as crutches—a trifle long, perhaps, but by no means to be cut off. If you were all as Grey as we are, we couldn't count you greater props than we do now. We're friends for life, and for scrapes on either side—and we're more grateful than I sound. This is rather a hard time for the Greys, but we've read lots of storybooks, and we know when the lovely heroines are in mortal danger there's certain rescue on the next page. So we're going to finish these paragraphs as quickly as we possibly can, and turn over to the next chapter."

She impulsively held out both hands as she ceased speaking, wrinkling up the comers of her eyes in her merry fashion, though there were tears on the lashes.

Bruce seized the firm little hands, with the honorable burn on one forefinger, and the thumb-nail blackened by hammering, and shook them warmly. Basil followed suit, and then all three shook hands with Wythie—it was rather like a fresh treaty of allegiance before going into battle. Then Bartlemy locked the oars and rowlocks into the boat-house and the Rutherfords and Frances escorted the Greys to their own gate, where they left them with a reassuring pat on each arm, and Wythie and Rob ran into the house.

They heard voices in the parlor and paused in the hall to listen. Their mother's and father's, Aunt Azraella's, and two strange men's voices they had just decided them to be, when Prue's golden head, much dishevelled, appeared over the banisters.

"Come up here, girls, come up here," she said, in a stage-whisper, gesticulating wildly. "Where have you been? Come; I'm half dead." Prue's cheeks were tear-stained and her voice husky; Oswyth and Rob hastened to her.

"What has happened?" Rob demanded.

Prue threw her arms around Wythie—her favorite sister—and dropped her golden head on her breast. "They're mortgaging the little grey house—oh dear, oh dear!" she sobbed.

Wythie drew Prue into her room, Rob following, very pale, and shut the door.

"Already?" Wythie said.

"This moment," said Prue, tragically. "When I came home Aunt Azraella was here, and still talking about our selling the furniture. Then papa seemed to lose all patience, and to want to have it over with. He said: 'Mr. Barker told me he was ready to take the mortgage and give me the money any moment I would call him over. Prue, go tell him now that I am ready to mortgage the house—that I'm waiting for him. And then go fetch lawyer Dinsmore. I must get it done, and stop discussing it; it takes too much nervous strain, and too much time from my work.' I looked at Mardy, and she looked miserable, but she only said: 'Go, Prue; hurry, child.' So I went. And they've been mortgaging down there for half an hour. They ought to be done soon, I should think: how long does it take to put on a mortgage?"

"Oh, I don't know, I do not know," moaned Rob, throwing herself face downward on the bed. "How long does it take to get one off, you'd better ask."

Prue looked hurt. "You can't care more than I do, Rob Grey," she said. "I've cried and cried, and I thought I'd die when I told Mr. Barker and Mr. Dinsmore to come."

Oswyth had sunk into her rocking-chair, the tears raining down her white cheeks. She held out her arms to Prue, who fled to them, very ready to be petted.

"Poor little Prue!" said Wythie. "And you were all alone to bear it. Poor, pretty little Prudy!"

Kiku, who was the most loving of little creatures, jumped up to rub his face against Rob's, not minding its wetness, and making soft, cooing sounds to her as if she were a kitten and he her cat-mother. The gentle, dumb, little creature comforted Rob more than spoken love could have done. She rolled over and kissed the cat between his pink-lined ears, and, seeing Wythie looking so grief-stricken, characteristically began to surmount her own trouble. "Now, doen't, doen't, my dear," she said, in the words of Ham Pegotty. "It's a blow that knocked me down for a minute, but I'm not going to lie prostrate long. We'll clear off the mortgage—Patergrey, the machine, and I—in a twinkling, and the little grey house shall be Greyer than ever."

Wythie shook her head, and at that moment they heard the front door shut and footsteps go down the walk. And in the hall their mother was saying: "There are those poor children upstairs alone; we must go comfort them, Sylvester."

There was no time to feign indifference before the door of the girls' room opened, and it was rather a dismal scene upon which Mr. and Mrs. Grey looked as they entered.

Mrs. Grey took Wythie and Prue into a comprehensive embrace, just as they sat. "Dearies, you must not grieve," she cried.

"Don't look so dismal, girls," said Mr. Grey, cheerfully. "The little grey house has merely lent the thin Grey man a thousand dollars, which he knows—doesn't think, mind you, but knows—he will soon repay. We are fortunate to get money when we need it so sorely, and we shall pay off that mortgage in a short time; isn't that true, Rob, my son?"

"That is true, Patergrey," responded Rob, loyally and promptly.

"We're not afraid, are we, Rob, my son? We know our machine is bound to succeed."

"Bound to succeed, Patergrey," said Rob, going over to him and laying a hand on her father's shoulder as though she were really the "son" he called her.

But that night, when Wythie, tired out, lay sleeping beside her, Rob's dark eyes were staring into the blackness, slumber completely driven from them by the events of the day, as she thought anxious thoughts for her sixteen years, and feverishly laid fruitless plans for being useful.

And that night, because of the over-excitement and the pang the decision he had reached had cost him, Mr. Grey had the second attack of the heart affection which threatened the Greys with a greater sorrow than the burden which had just been laid upon the little grey house.

CHAPTER TEN
ITS POSSIBILITIES

Frances appeared early on the following morning, and found sad faces to greet her where she usually found cheer.

"Well, what have you to propose to me, Francie, a secretaryship to the President, or to write the best-selling book of the year?" asked Rob, trying to speak brightly.

"The book is the nearer guess," said Frances. "I tried to think of what you could do best, and it was a puzzle. You are such a Jack-of-all-trades——"

"And we know what he amounts to," interrupted Rob. "You might as well finish the proverb."

"No such thing," declared Frances. "But you didn't seem to have any marked vocation, till suddenly it flashed upon me that you had done one thing wonderfully ever since you could talk, and I knew I'd hit it. Do you know what it is?"

Rob shook her head. "I had a talent for getting into scrapes, and you used to pull me out, but I never supposed the talent had market value. If you've discovered it has, you've pulled me out of another scrape with flying colors," she said.

"You could tell stories," said Frances.

"France, I was always truthful," said Rob, reproachfully.

"Now, don't be silly; you know what I mean," retorted Frances. "Don't you remember how you used to amuse all the rest of us children telling stories by the yard? And do you realize how children love to be with you? You have a regular fringe of small fry at your heels whenever you appear abroad."

"Well, I admit the Pied Piper qualities, and I remember telling stories, but I fail to see what you're getting at, ma'am," said Rob, dubiously.

"You're to tell your stories for money!" cried Frances, triumphantly. "You're to have a class of all the nice girls and boys in Fayre—and some will come from Thruston—and you are to entertain them by telling them stories for an hour and a half twice a week. You won't charge much—maybe only five dollars for twenty recitals, but that, if you had twenty children, would be a hundred dollars in ten weeks, and it would be just fun—no trouble at all to you to do it."

"You have thought out details, Frances," said Mrs. Grey. "You make me feel as though it were not only possible, but an accomplished fact."

"It is possible, Mrs. Grey," said Frances. "Mamma knows a lady in town who did it there, and it was a great success. She thinks Rob is sure of being even more successful, because she is so young the children will enjoy more being with her."

"And what kind of stories am I to tell, Frances? Any kind that keeps them quiet? Fayre is not like New York, where there are lots of people with wealth, but no place nor time to amuse their children. People here won't care about having their children entertained," said Rob, sensibly.

"Oh, I forgot that part," said Frances, eagerly. "No, of course, it couldn't be any kind of story. You are to tell them a set of Grecian Mythology stories, for instance; then a Round Table set, then a Crusading set, then, maybe a Shakespeare set, and stories of Rome, Greece, Egypt—goodness! There's no end to the series you can get up! Now wait!" she added, as Rob started to speak. "You know when we were little you read all these things, and loved them; we thought them dry, and nothing would have induced us to read them for ourselves. But when you told us about them we were like so many young robins, when the big bird chops up food too solid for them—we were all agape for more, and you had the faculty of making us see the beauty, and not missing a point. It was enthusiasm and magnetism, mamma says. Well, you have those gifts just as much now."

"I'll try to believe in my talents," said Rob, meekly.

"You'd better. Mamma told me to lay the plan before you all, and, if you approve, to say she will guarantee Rob a class of not less than twenty to begin with, and she will find the children for her. Will you try it, Rob?" asked Frances, eagerly.

"How good your mother is; how kind you both are!" exclaimed Mrs. Grey.

"Oh, France always was clear, unadulterated splendidness," said Rob, getting up to hug the one girl friend she had ever really loved. "How can I help but try it, when it is all done for me? Of course, I'll be only too glad to try it, Francie, and I'll do my best."

"I couldn't possibly fail to approve, approve gladly and gratefully," said Mrs. Grey.

"I think it's a beautiful plan—an inspiration, Frances," said Wythie. "And I know Rob can do it like no one else; she does such things with her face and voice that she always makes one see what she sees." And Oswyth smiled proudly on Rob.

"I should hate to fail, after your mother had done so much to launch me," said Rob.

"'Screw your courage to the sticking-point and we'll not fail,'" said Frances, who could hardly have been less like Lady Macbeth.

"Then, if I succeed, I might enlarge my field, have classes in neighboring towns, and by and by in Hartford and New Haven, and—why not?—New York," cried Rob, airily. "Then if the bricquette machine did turn out badly I could support the family."

"Rob, Rob, I thought you had no doubt of the invention!" cried her mother, such a sharp note of pain in her voice that it betrayed her own doubt, and her unconscious dependence on the young girl's opinion, ignorant though it was.

"Neither have I, Mardy, it's sure—don't be afraid," said Rob, hastily. "But when you want a thing so dreadfully, dreadfully much you can't help thinking what it would be not to get it. And I feel as the Red Queen must have felt when she was a little girl, and had to believe three impossible things before breakfast. I do believe, but I have to try—try with both hands, as Her Red Majesty told Alice to do—to keep my faith, though I know it's all right all the while. And the invention is so nearly completed, Francie, that Patergrey thinks that next week he can write to the people in New York whom he wants to have buy it. Isn't that a comfort, after so long? It sounds so definite."

"Indeed it does!" cried Frances, heartily. Mrs. Grey hastily left the room, and Wythie ran after her, guessing that she had gone to hide sudden tears.

Rob looked after them soberly. "Oh, France," she said, "you could not have come with your plan at a better time—we need cheering. They put the mortgage on the little grey house yesterday—they were doing it when we came home. And Patergrey got so wrought up that he had another of those dreadful heart attacks last night."

"Oh, Rob; poor, dear, brave Rob! I am so sorry for you!" cried Frances, with ready tears of sympathy and a convulsive hug.

Rob shook herself free. "Now, don't pity me!" she cried. "I have all I can do to keep steady if I am as hard as nails, and you see I must keep gay for the others. I know, France; we know each other, but don't love me now! No one could have done me the good you have in giving me the hope of being useful. I'll never forget how you came in this black morning and tried to 'push dem clouds away'—you have made a big rift. If ever I get rich and famous I'll give you your heart's desire, and if ever I can help you while I'm poor—which may be a while yet, you know—I'll walk over the ocean to do it. But don't you love me nor pity me to-day."

"All right. I don't love you any day; I despise you, and always did," said Frances, with a last squeeze as she withdrew her arms. "Now I must run home to tell mamma you are unanimous. She said if you liked the plan she would see all the parents she could this afternoon, and bid them send their little lambs for you to pipe to them."

"Well, Francie, Patergrey does want me, so I suppose I ought to let you go," said Rob. "Tell your blessed mother I can never thank her, but tell her how troubled you found us, and she will understand the good she has done."

Rob hardly knew how it happened that at the end of two weeks she found herself established as a Scheherazade, telling stories, not to an Eastern tyrant, but to five-and-twenty lesser tyrants—not less tyrannical—with the east in their bright eyes.

Mrs. Silsby had bestirred herself so energetically that Rob's childish audience was not only secured for her at once, but exceeded by five the twenty she had hoped to get. Mr. Grey said children were showered upon her as if she were a foundling asylum.

Their ages ranged between eleven and six, the average being eight, and Roberta wondered how she was ever going to interest them, restless as so many butterflies, and inclined to approach suspiciously an entertainment which they suspected of being improving, and very possibly additional lessons under a hypocritical disguise. But they were worth winning, for all of the audience was paid for in advance, and bewildered Rob found a hundred and twenty-five dollars in her hands, which was all her own.

Mrs. Silsby managed the financial end of Rob's enterprise, as she had its other details, which was lucky, for Rob would never have dared to offer course-tickets to her stories, with no rebates for absences. But Mrs. Silsby said five dollars was so absurdly little for twenty entertainments that nothing else was to be considered, and Rob yielded, suggesting only that at the top of her little programmes were printed: "Mrs. James Silsby presents Miss Roberta Grey," after the fashion of a great New York manager, and that at the bottom be added: "Treasurer and Press Agent, Mrs. J. H. Silsby."

There was some difficulty about Rob's title. Every lad and lassie in her audience—all of whom she had known from their cradles—hailed her "Hallo, Rob," when they met in the highway, but as a Scheherazade the case was different, and her scant dignity of sixteen needed re-enforcing.

Mrs. Dinsmore, the lawyer's wife, who was a great stickler for propriety, insisted that her two hopefuls should say "Miss Roberta," and advised Rob to exact this title from the others. But Dorothy Dinsmore herself settled the question by refusing to consider it.

"I wouldn't say Miss Roberta for anything, mamma," she declared. "I might say Roberta, but I'd rather say Miss Rob, if I must do anything silly, because you can just slide over that, and say ''S Rob'—and it wouldn't make much difference."

"I would rather be called Rob than Srob," laughed Rob. "Oh, let them go, Mrs. Dinsmore! It's going to be as nice a time as I can make it for them, and I suspect it will be nicer if we don't try to make them forget I'm just a bigger child than they are."

The result was that at Rob's first recital, though the children began decorously in their places, dubious as to what was to befall them, they soon discovered that it was not a prim teacher, but "just Rob Grey," the Rob Grey they had always known, who was telling them the most delightful story they had ever heard. It was a story as full of magical impossibilities as the fairy-tales that the girls loved, and as full of the clash of arms, and the fury of battle, and the prowess of knights as the boys could ask.

And behold, before she was half-way through, each of the twenty-five of her audience had left his seat, and the children were hanging, entranced and adoring, on the back, arms, and rounds of her chair, huddling at her feet and leaning on her knees, and she knew that she was succeeding beyond her fondest hopes.

Her first series was the Arthurian legends; Rob had prepared the first story carefully and told it well, for she loved romance, chivalry, and the poetry of history as every imaginative girl does, and the inspiration of the fifty bright eyes, the eager lips, open as if to drink in her words, made her lose herself as completely as when a few years before, a little girl herself, she had told these stories to her playmates.

Rob came home from her first recital—Mrs. Silsby had perfected her kindness by lending her big parlor for the tale-telling—in the highest feather.

"I'm a mediæval minstrel, a bard, a minne-singer," she declared. "And, best of all, I'm a success. I may become a monologist, at ever so much a night. Why, the children hung on my words—and they hung on my back and arms and knees besides."

Prue, who had a strong sense of dignified propriety, was scandalized. "You don't mean to say, Rob," she exclaimed, "that you let those children swarm all over you? Why, they ought to have kept their seats strictly."

"Well, they didn't; they left them laxly." Rob laughed outright at Prue's horrified face.

"My dear spinster-sister Prudence, children can't half listen if they don't wriggle—they must fidget about, or they get deaf in their brains—not their ears. You used to swarm all over me when I told you stories."

"I was your sister," said Prue, convincingly.

"Yes, you were; I even fancy sometimes you haven't outgrown being my sister," said Rob. "Proper or not, the dear little crowd had a perfectly scrumptious time, and they wanted me to promise to tell them a story every day. You see, I'm already like a sort of serial, which doesn't come out often enough. But the best of it is, I am actually earning money and helping my family."

"You have always been the greatest help, Rob dear," said Mrs. Grey. "You have been our tonic ever since you were old enough to feel sympathy, and that was long ago."

"If I'm a tonic, Wythie must be cold cream, or something healing, and Prue—what is Prudy? Violet extract to keep us dainty, I suspect," said Rob.

If Rob was glad and thankful for her success, Frances was triumphantly glorying in it. She never had been an especially clever child, while Rob had been a brilliant little creature, the pride of her teachers, who invariably brought her forward when the credit of the school was to be maintained—this was in their early childhood, and during the irregular periods when Rob had been at school. Now the humdrum girl had devised the scheme which was to make clever Rob's fortune, as if the moth had unexpectedly furnished the wick to the candle, and Frances was as proud as she was delighted in its results.

The Rutherford boys hailed Rob a story-teller with irreverent glee. Contributions from one or another of Battalion B poured in daily—sometimes from all three at once. Maria Edgeworth's Moral Tales—to supplement Rob's, if "her grey matter gave out," Basil's accompanying note stated; a bunch of rattan-rods, slates, primers, spectacles, and a cap for herself. Even a false front came from Bruce—most frankly false, with a muslin parting, and yellow in color, because, he explained, he "thought yellow would contrast prettily with her dark eyes, and her cap would hide its not matching her own brown locks." Bartlemy illuminated a set of mottoes to adorn the walls of what the boys called "Rob's auditorium." "Little Children Must Never Tell Stories," "Listen to My Tale of Woe," "As Tedious as a Twice-Told Tale," "Young Robin Grey Came a-Courtin' We," "Truth is Stranger (Here) Than Fiction," "Plain Tales for the Bills," three for a side of the room. Rob hung these brilliant productions, and piled up all her other tributes from Battalion B in a small, unused room under the "lean-to" roof, where twice a week she retired to prepare her story for the next recital.

In spite of the boys' ridicule, in spite of Aunt Azraella's croaking, Rob's experiment was proving more successful each week. But the pleasantest part of it all to Rob was when her father appealed to her as a capitalist to aid in launching the invention.

"It is all done, Rob, practically finished," said Mr. Grey, laying a trembling hand on the girl's shoulder one morning at the end of two hours' close work together.

"Don't get excited, Patergrey; you know it is forbidden you," cried Rob, beginning to quiver in sympathy. "Yes, it's done. Sit down; you look pale—let me get you a tablet."

"Rob, you've been my right hand—my extra pair of hands—all the way through," said her father, impatiently waving away the suggestion of a tablet. "You've had so much faith, dear son Rob, and have understood so clearly that you have helped me in that way almost more than in any other. Now I am going to ask you to help me still further. Have you any special use for the first hundred and twenty-five dollars from your story-telling?"