The next week came that never-to-be-forgotten outing which gave the Northmore girls their first glimpse of Boston, and their first acquaintance with the sea. Till the morning they started there was no talk of anything else. Stella, who knew better than her cousins what occasion might demand of dress in a stylish watering-place, bent all her artistic skill to the revising of garments, and even Kate and Esther, whose wardrobes were mostly new, found some chance for retouchings, some need of new laces and ribbons.
For the first time since their coming, their grandfather really felt himself a little neglected. Occasionally, as he passed through the room where the three girls sat busy with sewing and the eager discussion of styles and colors, he murmured solemnly, “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity;” and he not only prayed feelingly at family devotions that the young of his household might learn to adorn themselves with “the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit,” but he selected once for his morning reading a chapter in which warnings were pronounced against those who set their hearts on “changeable suits of apparel, and mantles, and wimples, and crisping-pins.” However, he was as anxious as any one that his granddaughters should enjoy themselves, and his good-will toward this particular excursion was sufficiently indicated by the trifle which he quietly added to the pin-money of each when they started off.
It does not concern our story, and would take too long to tell all the sights and happenings of the days that followed. Never did two more interested or more appreciative girls than Kate and Esther Northmore walk about the streets of Boston, or take in the meanings and memories which it held in its keeping, and in its dear vicinity.
At Cambridge, as they walked about the grounds of Harvard, whom should they meet but Mr. Philip Hadley? A remarkable coincidence it seemed at the time, though Kate remembered later that Stella had set out with tolerable distinctness the time when they expected to be there, with other details of the Boston visit, that night at the farm.
After that, he had part in all their excursions, and a charming addition he made to the party. Stella was a good chaperon, but he was even better, for he had the entree of a dozen places which they could not have entered without him, and whether it was acquaintance, or a liberal use of money, never were more gracious attentions bestowed on a party of sight-seers. He was really a delightful companion; a good talker, a good listener, and so perfectly at leisure that he was ready to act on the slightest hint of anything that interested the others.
It was a suggestion of Stella’s, and a lucky one, as she congratulated herself, which led to the most unexpected incident of the whole visit. They had been talking, she and Mr. Hadley, of Copleys, as they walked through the Boston art gallery, and he had mentioned suddenly that there was one in his own home; after which came the quick invitation to make a visit that afternoon to the house on Beacon Street.
The others accepted with no special emotion, but Stella was radiant, and, Bostonian as she called herself, it was she who felt most curiosity when they stood, a few hours later, before the door which bore the name of Hadley, in the long row of brown stone fronts. The house was closed for the summer, and Mr. Hadley had made no attempt to open any rooms except the library, but this! It occupied all one side of the long hall on the second floor; a room filled with books and pictures and marbles. “A perfect place,” as Stella declared, clasping her hands in a transport of artistic satisfaction.
There were books on books. Indeed, the Northmore girls, accustomed as they were to a fair library at home, had not realized that so many books were ever gathered in one room, outside of public places; and there were pictures beside pictures. There was a Corot at which the heir of the house had not even hinted; and the Copley hung beside a celebrated Millais. Whether the young man most enjoyed the keen appreciation of Stella, or the frank, delighted wonder of the others, is a question. He did the honors of the place with the easy indifference of one to the manner born, and it seemed a mere matter of course, when he called the attention of his guests to one choice possession after another, to rare old copies of books and deluxe editions.
Stella’s delight seemed to mount with every moment, but Esther grew so quiet at last that the others rallied her on her soberness. She flushed when Stella declared that she looked almost melancholy, and said, with a glance at the shelves, that one should not be expected to be merry in such company.
But, truth to tell, her thoughts had company just then that no other knew. There had come back to her, oddly perhaps, the memory of a day when Morton Elwell showed her the shelf of books in his little room. It was not a handsome shelf—he had made it himself; and the books he had bought, one after another, with savings which meant wearing the old hat and the patch on the boots. How proud he was of those books! There was no easy indifference in his manner as he stood before them with his shining face, and his hand had almost trembled as he passed it caressingly over their plain cloth bindings.
The servant in charge of the house presently answered Mr. Hadley’s ring by bringing up a tray with the daintiest of lunches, and he himself set steaming the samovar which stood in a cosey corner. He could preside over pretty china almost as gracefully as Stella herself, when it came to that. Altogether it was a delectable hour which they spent in that library, and the girls all said so in their various fashions when they parted with Mr. Hadley. Esther, perhaps, said it with more feeling than either of the others. She felt as if she had been part of something she had dreamed of all her life, and yet—it was almost provoking, too—that old, insistent memory had half spoiled the dream.
From Boston to Nahant was the move next on their programme. The place was in its glory then, one of the prettiest of the seaside resorts; and for a week they did everything that anybody does at the shore.
Oh, the delight of it all! The pleasure of sitting on the level sands and watching the tides creep in and out; the transports and trepidations of the first dip into the great salt bath, and the unimagined joy of flying over the bright blue water under sails stretched by a glorious breeze! If anything could have made Kate waver in her conviction that her native state was best favored of all in the length and breadth of the land, it would have been, at moments, the thought of its distance from the sea; and it was a long, devouring look, almost a tearful look, that she sent back at the blue expanse when the hour came to leave it.
The outing had been a complete success, from beginning to end. They were too tired to talk of it, as they rode on the train back to Esterly. To look musingly out of the windows was all that any of them cared to do. But words came fast again as they rode back to the farm with their grandfather, who was waiting for them, of course, at the depot; and faster still when, with Tom and Aunt Elsie as listeners, they were all seated at the family supper.
“We’ve had more fun than we expected, positively more,” Kate exclaimed, “and I shall never take a bit of stock again in that idea that thinking about things beforehand is better than actually having them. It must have been started by somebody who was too old to enjoy things.”
And her grandfather, after grunting a little over the last clause, and calling attention to the fact that he, at least, had never seen the time when he could say of any rational enjoyments, “I have no pleasure in them,” was inclined to agree with the sentiment.
“Things don’t turn out just as you expect them to, of course,” he remarked reflectively. “I never knew it to happen that a body didn’t miss something of what he’d counted on, but then, on the other hand, something’s sure to turn up that you warn’t looking for, and you must set one over against the other. There are worse things than old age to keep folks from enjoying themselves,” he added acutely, “and one of them is being so taken up with yourself that you feel abused if your own plans don’t work out to a T. For my part, I shouldn’t wonder if there was more pleasure to be got out of surprises, anyhow.”
The allusion to unexpected things of course suggested the meeting with Mr. Hadley, and then followed a full account of all his subsequent attentions. The old gentleman was delighted, and wished he could have been with them when they made that visit to the house on Beacon Street, a wish which it is doubtful whether the girls fully shared. They did not demur to it, however, nor yet to his evident impression that the young man’s gratitude for the light which had been thrown on the history of his forefathers had led him to extend these pleasant courtesies to his, Ruel Saxon’s, descendants.
Tom was the first to suggest the doubt. “Say, did the nabob talk all the time about his ancestors?” he demanded of Kate, as they sat on the wood-pile after supper, a perch to which she declared she was glad to come back after her fortnight’s absence.
“Of course he didn’t,” she replied. “I don’t think he spoke of them once, except when he showed us some of their portraits in the library.”
“I thought so,” said Tom, kicking a birch stick down from the pile, and sending it with accurate aim against the instrument which he called a “saw-horse” and she called a “saw-buck.” Then, looking her in the eyes, he asked coolly, “Which of ’em is it, Stelle or Esther?”
“Both of ’em, I reckon,” said Kate, with equal coolness.
“It’ll be one of them in particular if it keeps on like this,” said Tom, “and I’ll bet a shilling it’ll be Esther.”
For once she did not take up the wager. It had been thrown down between them so often during the summer that nothing had prevented their both becoming bankrupt except the standing quarrel as to the amount involved, Tom maintaining steadily that it was sixteen and two-third cents, one sixth of a dollar, and she insisting with equal obstinacy that it was twelve and a half. This time she let it pass.
“Tom, you’re a goose,” she said severely; and then she added: “I suppose you don’t think it’s possible that he’s at all impressed with me. I’d like to have you know that we had a great deal of conversation. Why”—she threw a shade of weariness into her voice—“I had to go over most of the ground that I’ve been going over with you ever since I came. We had r up, of course. I really could not help speaking of it. One would think there was something actually profane about that poor little letter, the way the Bostonians avoid using it. And when I’d fairly made out my case, and he couldn’t deny it, he had to pretend, just as you do, that we Westerners make too much of it, when we don’t at all; and as if that was any answer!”
“The way you do,” observed Tom, sympathetically, “when I show you that you folks mix up the wills and shalls so there’s no telling which from t’other, and you get back at me by declaring that we say ‘hadn’t ought’ and a few things of that sort.”
And then they fell to it again in the old fashion, Kate protesting the absolute incapacity of the average mind for grasping the fine distinctions between those two auxiliaries, which, thank Heaven, have still not wholly lost their special uses on our Eastern coast, and finally, after various thrusts at local usage, ending with the charge that New Englanders more than dwellers in the West are guilty of dropping from their speech the final g, a point on which the impartial listener might possibly have thought that she had a little the best of it.
And while the good-natured dispute went on, another and more important conversation was being held in the house on the old county road, where Esther sat with Aunt Katharine in the growing twilight. She had slipped away from her grandfather’s as soon as supper was over to make the call. There had been so many of these calls since her three days’ visit there that no one was surprised at them any more or offered to accompany her. It was recognized by all that there was something of genuine intimacy between these two, an intimacy at which every one smiled except Kate, whose dislike of her lonely old relative seemed to increase with her sister’s fondness.
Aunt Katharine had heard the click of the gate as the girl came up, and for once she had hobbled down the walk to greet a guest. There was almost a hungry look in her eyes as they searched the bright young face, and her brother had not inquired more eagerly than she for the particulars of the trip. And Esther went over it all, with a cheery pleasure that warmed her listener’s heart, talking as she might have talked to her mother of the things she had seen and felt, gayly, without reserve, and sure always of the interest of the other.
It was a rare hour to Aunt Katharine. Not in years had any fresh young life brought its happiness so willingly to her, and her heart responded with a glow and fulness like the sudden out-leaping of a brook in the spring.
At the last Esther had said, a little wistfully, that she was glad these days had come so late in this summer visit. It was almost ended now, but its climax of pleasure had been reached, and the memory of it would be a joy forever.
“Do you have to go back, both of you, the first of September?” Aunt Katharine asked suddenly. “Why couldn’t you stay a while longer? They don’t need you at home for anything special, do they?”
The idea took definite shape as she caught the outlines of it, and her keen eyes kindled. “You like things here better ’n Kate does, and you’re older. S’pose you should stay at the farm and see what a New England fall is like—you can’t know your mother’s country without knowing that—and then spend the winter in Boston with Stella. She’d like it, and she’d let you into a lot of things you want to know about. I never cared much for pictures and music and such, but you do; and you or’ to have a taste of ’em while you’re young.”
She paused, and Esther said with a gasp: “Oh, that would be glorious, glorious! But the expense of it, Aunt Katharine! Father couldn’t possibly afford to let me do it, and I couldn’t pay my own way, you know, as Stella does.”
“I wasn’t counting on your father’s bearing the expense, nor you either,” said Miss Saxon, dryly. “I guess I could afford to do that much for you, and a few other things too, if you took a notion to ’em.” And then a tenderer note crept into her voice as she added, “I missed most of the things I wanted when I was a girl, and I’d like to make sure of it that you fared better.”
There was no talking for a minute or two after that. The delights that seemed to open before Esther through the avenues of this plan almost took her breath away, and the generosity that proposed it made her eyes dim with tears. It was Aunt Katharine, not she, who could discuss it coolly, and to the old woman the thought seemed to grow every moment dearer. There were friends of hers in Boston—not Stella’s friends, she added, with a peculiar smile—people who would be good to Esther for her sake. Perhaps Esther would come to feel toward them as she herself did, and then she looked at the girl for a moment as if taking her measure with reference to something larger than she knew.
The dew was falling and the whippoorwills were calling across the hills through the twilight that had deepened almost into night when Esther rose at last to go home. She had never kissed Aunt Katharine before, but the old woman drew her face down to hers and held it for an instant as she bade her good night. Then she said almost brusquely:—
“You’d better hurry home now. They’ll think I’ve lost my wits entirely to be keeping you so long. And you’ve got that letter to write to your mother. Tell her everything, and be sure it goes in the morning.”
And Esther, with feet almost as light as the wings of the night birds, hurried across the fields to tell the surprising news to the two circles—the household at home, and the one at her grandfather’s.
It was a long letter that went to Mrs. Northmore the next morning. Indeed, there were three; for Stella, in her delight over the prospect of keeping Esther, filled a sheet with an ecstatic picture of the joys which a winter in Boston would surely furnish, and Ruel Saxon supplied another, impressing upon his daughter his own deep satisfaction in the thought of having one of her children with him a little longer, and adding tenderly that since she herself went out of the home so long ago, no young presence there had been as dear and comforting to him as this of Esther.
He had been amazed when the girl brought the news of Aunt Katharine’s proposal, and certainly nothing in his sister’s behavior for years had pleased him as much. He visited her promptly the next morning to assure her of his approval, and congratulate her (as he told Aunt Elsie) on having for once acted with such eminent good sense. But either he did not do it in the most tactful manner, or he found his sister in an unfortunate mood, for it appeared from his own account of it that, after the brightest preliminaries, she had proceeded to air her most obnoxious views; views which, as he pensively declared, he had smitten hip and thigh and put utterly to rout more than once; and he ended his report of the interview with an expression of irritated wonder as to how so amiable a girl as Esther Northmore ever came to be a favorite with her Aunt Katharine Saxon.
But there was one person who found it even harder than he to understand the partiality. This was Kate; and in her the wonder was mingled with a sort of resentment which she could not throw off. She alone of the household had not rejoiced when her sister came in that night with the announcement of the invitation which seemed to her such great good fortune. There was no touch of envy in it. To the exclamation of all, “If Kate could only stay, too!” she had responded with perfect honesty, “I don’t want to. I’ve had a splendid time here; but I’m about ready to go home now, and I wouldn’t stay away longer than we planned if I could.”
It was none of her business perhaps,—she said it to herself again and again,—but she did not like the growing influence which Aunt Katharine was gaining over Esther. It did not matter so much while the intimacy was thought to be only passing, and going home lay in the near distance, but to leave her sister behind, within touch of this masterful spirit, and all the more open to her influence through receiving her favors, this was a prospect before which Kate chafed with a growing uneasiness. That thing which Tom had told her so long ago, which had only amused her then, that Aunt Katharine had said she would leave her money to that one of her female relatives who would promise never to marry, came back to her now to vex and trouble her. That the woman would definitely make so bald a proposal, or that the girl would definitely accept it, were suggestions which at moments seemed too foolish to entertain; she could brush them aside with scorn; and then, in some new form, they would come creeping back. If not a definite proposal, a formal promise, there might be tacit understanding, something which would rest upon the girl and bind her as subtly as any pledge. Poor Kate! She could not even understand her own state of mind. Was it love of Esther? Was it thought of Morton Elwell, and a haunting sense of a hope which she felt sure he carried deep in his heart? Or was it simply the revolt of a spirit as stout as Aunt Katharine’s own against the possibility of any bondage, for her sister as for herself?
As the days went on—the days before the letter came from home which finally settled the question—she grew restless and depressed. Even the disputes with Tom fell off, and he rallied her sometimes on her lack of spirit.
“I believe it’s the notion of going West again that makes you so down in the mouth, for all you pretend you’re so keen to go,” he said to her once, as they were tramping home in the late afternoon from the wood-lot, where they had gone in search of sassafras.
She tossed her head. “You know better,” she said, “and between ourselves and the post you aren’t so very lively yourself lately. I believe you’d like to go home with me and grow up with the West a while.”
They exchanged a good-natured laugh. There was no denying that there were moments when the thought of parting with his cousin Kate really depressed Tom Saxon. She had the next word, and she said it with unaffected seriousness.
“Honestly, Tom, I don’t know what ails me. If I could have a good out-and-out cry I believe I could get over it; but there isn’t anything really to cry about. I’ll tell you how I do sometimes at home, when I feel blue. I get down Dickens, and read, the death of little Nell, or how they killed Sydney Carton, or something awfully harrowing like that, you know, and then I have it out and feel better. But you haven’t got Dickens here,” she added ruefully.
“Grandfather’s got Foxe’s ‘Book of Martyrs,’” said Tom, grinning, and then he added, in a tone of curiosity, “Do you cry over books?” It was a feminine weakness which he had not suspected of Kate.
“Cry!” she repeated. “Yes, I do; and I don’t care who knows it. I’ll tell you how I got through ‘Nicholas Nickleby.’ It used me up so every time I read how Squeers treated those poor fellows in his school that I couldn’t stand it. Well, I knew he got his come-up-ance from Nicholas in the end, so every time I read one of those mean places, I’d just turn ahead and read how Nicholas flogged him. I reckon I must have read that scene a dozen times before I fairly came to it, and it did me more good every time. I believe that story would have killed me if I hadn’t.”
There was plenty of fight in Kate. Tom had known that for some time. That there were tears, too, need not have surprised any one but a boy, and he liked her none the less for it. She gave a long sigh, and came back to her own troubles. The sympathetic tone in which Tom said, “I wish I could do something for you,” was a comfort in itself, and the need of talking to some one drew her on.
“Right down at the bottom of it, Tom, I suppose it’s the thought of going home without Esther; and yet it isn’t because I hate to leave her behind. I shall miss her, of course; but I could stand that. She was off at school a whole year and I didn’t pine for her so dreadfully much. But—but it’s Aunt Katharine! Tom, I can’t bear to have Esther get so intimate with Aunt Katharine.”
She had actually said it now, and for the rest of the way home she poured out her heart with a girlish freedom. Perhaps her feelings grew more clear to herself as she tried to make them plain to him. He understood better than she expected, and fully agreed with her as to the undesirability of Aunt Katharine’s “making a slave of Esther”; but he thought her fears on this point much exaggerated, and it was good advice that he gave her as they neared the house.
“If I was in your place I wouldn’t worry about it. I guess Aunt Katharine’s got some sense if she is so cranky. And Esther’s old enough to know what she’s about. Just leave her alone to get sick of some of those notions herself before she’s done with ’em, and you ease up on the fretting. It doesn’t do a bit of good, anyhow.”
She really meant to “ease up.” Tom’s opinion on the last point was distinctly sound, but the old disquiet had possession of her again within five minutes from the time that conversation ended. The letter had come from home—she learned it as she entered the house—giving hearty consent that Esther should remain in New England, and the girl was already off to carry the word to Aunt Katharine. She had said she would be back soon, but no one really expected it, and supper was over before they saw her coming across the fields. Kate, who was watching, saw her first, and slipping out of the house hurried to meet her.
She had brought happy thoughts from Aunt Katharine’s, happy and serious too, it would seem from the look in her face, and they occupied her so intently that she had almost met her sister before she saw her coming. Then she put out both her hands with an eager greeting.
“I’m so glad you’ve come,” she said. “I wanted to talk it over a little by ourselves.” She slipped her arm through Kate’s, and turned back into the darkening fields. “You weren’t surprised at what the letter said, were you? I was sorry you weren’t there when it came; but I had to take it down to Aunt Katharine, for it was partly to her, and I couldn’t wait.”
“No, I wasn’t surprised. I felt sure they’d let you stay,” said Kate, and then she added, “I do hope you’ll have a good time, Esther, and enjoy everything as much as you expect to.”
She had made an effort to speak heartily, but there was such a sober note in her voice that Esther’s face clouded, and she looked quickly at her sister. “If you were only going to be here too, Kate, it would be perfect,” she said. “I shall be wishing all the way along that you were in the good times with me. And if you hadn’t said so positively that you wanted to go home, I should have felt like proposing to Aunt Katharine to cut my time in Boston in two and let us be there together for a little while.”
“I shouldn’t have thanked you for it if you had,” said Kate, a sudden impatience leaping into her voice. Then, with a bitterness she ought to have kept down, she added, “I don’t like Aunt Katharine, and I don’t want her favors.”
The look in Esther’s face changed. “You don’t do Aunt Katharine justice, Kate,” she said. “Nobody does here. She isn’t hateful and hard-hearted, as you all seem to think. She’s good and kind and true—oh, so true! I believe she’d do more and give more than any other person I ever saw to bring about what she thinks is right. I don’t know, I’m sure, how she came to like me, but I know why I like her. I admire her and I love her, and there’s nobody in the world I’d rather take a favor from than Aunt Katharine.”
Kate set her teeth hard. She had prejudiced everything she had meant to say by the heat with which she had spoken. She was silent a moment, then she said almost piteously: “I don’t wonder she likes you. But I may as well be honest, Esther; I do hate to see her getting such an influence over you. It’s all well enough to admire her for standing up for her own opinions, but I don’t see how you can fall in with some of them. I don’t see how you can bear it to hear her talk so bitterly against the ways we’ve always been used to. And especially I don’t see how you can stand it to hear her run down the men as she does.”
“I don’t agree with all her opinions,” said Esther, quickly, “but I can see how she comes to hold them, and she doesn’t always talk as harshly as you think. But it isn’t her opinions any way; it’s her own self that I care about.”
“And you’ll end by wanting to look at everything just as she does, because you like her so much and feel so indebted to her,” said Kate. Then, with an accent that was fairly tragic, she added: “Oh, she knows it, she knows it, and that’s what she wants to keep you here for! She’ll end by wanting you never to marry, and offering to leave you all her money if you’ll promise not to do it.”
Esther drew her arm away from her sister, and the flush that swept over her face was plain even in the twilight. “I think you’d better leave all that to Aunt Katharine and me. It doesn’t strike me as coming under your charge,” she said proudly. And then the coldness in her voice melted with a sudden heat as she added: “But suppose I should come to see things as she does—suppose I should come to take a different view of life from what I did once, what then? I’ll go where my honest convictions lead me. It’s my right and my duty, and I shall do it.”
It sounded very brave and solemn in the twilight. A whippoorwill from the woods behind Aunt Katharine’s house had the only word that followed, and he called it across the stillness with a long soft cadence that sounded like a wail.
They turned their faces to the house and walked toward it without speaking. It was a relief to both when Stella came out to meet them.
“I thought you were never coming,” she said to Esther. “Dear me, I shall be glad when I get you in Boston, with Aunt Katharine too far away to use her magnet on you.”
A half hour later Kate was in conference with Tom again. She had called him into the shadows of the barn, and her voice was almost a whisper as she said:—
“Tom, I want you to wake me up to-morrow morning when you come down to do the milking. I’m going to make a call before breakfast.”
Tom gave a low whistle. “At that time in the morning! Where are you going?” he demanded.
“To Aunt Katharine’s,” she said.
Tom gave another whistle, this time a louder one. “Great Scott!” he ejaculated. “So you’re going to keep it right up, are you?”
“I’m going to keep it up till I’ve had one good square talk with her,” said Kate, with decision. “Very likely it’s none of my business,—you’ve told me that, and so has Esther,—but she’s tremendously clear that she’s got to follow her conscience where it leads her, and mine leads me right down there to Aunt Katharine’s. I can’t go home without doing it, and there’s only a week longer for me to stay, so I may as well take time by the forelock.”
“I should think it was taking time by the forelock with a vengeance to go down there at five o’clock. Why don’t you go at a reasonable hour?” growled Tom.
Kate was losing patience. “Because I don’t want Esther to know I’m going,” she said. “If I go later she might happen to come in while I’m there, or she might ask me where I’d been. No, I’ve made up my mind to go before breakfast, and all you have to do is to wake me up.”
“I’d like to know how I’m going to do it without waking her, too,” he said.
“Oh, I’ll fix that part,” she replied, beginning to smile a little. “Of course you can’t pound on the door; but I’ve got a trick worth two of that. I’ll tie a string round my wrist and let the end hang out of the window. Then, when you come by, you can pull it and that’ll wake me up. I waked a girl that way once, on Fourth of July (only the string was round her ankle), and she slept so like a log that she said I almost pulled her out of the window before she was fairly awake. But you needn’t be afraid of pulling me out. Just give a twitch and I shall feel it. I sleep on the front side.”
“All right,” said Tom, and then he could not help adding, “but I’ll tell you now that your going down there won’t do a bit of good, and you’d better keep out of it.”
“It’ll do me good to free my mind,” said Kate. “And after that I mean to take your advice, Tom, and quit worrying.”
The allusion to his advice was gratifying. Tom agreed to administer the twitch at half-past four the next morning, and they separated, feeling like a pair of conspirators, Kate at least clear in the opinion that she was conspiring for the good of humanity.
She lay awake so long that night, turning in her mind what she would say to Aunt Katharine, and never getting it settled, for the singular reason that she could never foresee what Aunt Katharine would say next, that it seemed to her she had not been asleep at all when there came the appointed signal in the cool of the morning. For a moment she had a passing dream that some one was trying to amputate her hand with a wood-saw, then it all came back to her. Her eyes flew open, and she crept stealthily out of bed. A flutter of the curtain showed Tom she was astir, but after that there was as little flutter as possible.
She slipped into her clothes as noiselessly as a ghost, with fearful glances at Esther, who slept on in serene oblivion of the plot against her, carried her shoes in her hand to the foot of the stairs, and went out through the kitchen, where even Aunt Elsie had not yet made her appearance. At the barn she paused a minute for a word with Tom and a cup of new milk, then flew down the lane, anxious still lest some one, looking unseasonably from the house, should see her, till the bend of the first hill hid her from view.
Some one has acutely remarked that people who break their usual habits by rising very early in the morning are apt to be a little conceited in the first part of the day and somewhat stupid in the last. There was certainly no lack of self-assurance in Kate Northmore, as she took that walk across the dewy fields, with the fresh air blowing on her face, and the twitter of birds sounding from the woods. Not till she actually stood at Aunt Katharine’s threshold was there any tremor of her nerves or any flutter at her heart.
Miss Saxon herself answered the knock, and a look of something like alarm came into her face as she saw the caller. “Is anybody sick at your house?” she asked quickly.
Kate had not foreseen the question. “No,” she said, taken a little aback. “Nobody’s sick, but I wanted to see you, and I thought I’d come early.”
“I should think so,” ejaculated the old woman, her face relaxing into a grim sort of a smile. “Well, come in and se’ down.”
She had no notion of preparing the way for the announcement of a pressing errand, or of hindering it by any observations of her own, and she took the chair opposite Kate’s with her hands clasped on the top of her cane, waiting in perfect silence for the girl to begin.
Kate’s heart began to thump now, and her mouth felt suddenly dry. “I’m going home in a week,” she said, “and I—I wanted to talk about something with you before I went.” And then suddenly she stopped. There was a queer sort of clutch at her throat, and for a minute she could not go on.
The old woman’s eyebrows bent themselves into a puzzled frown. “Well,” she said at last, “you hain’t favored me with much of your company this summer. If you’ve got any particular reason for coming now, I s’pose you know what ’tis.”
The sharpness of her tone brought Kate back to herself. “Yes’m I do,” she said, “and it’s about Esther. You’ve asked her to stay here and she’s going to do it—no, I don’t want to stay myself,”—she threw in quickly. “I’m ready to go home; but she wants to. She thinks it’s glorious.” And then she stopped again, that unaccountable clutch at the throat coming for a second time.
“And you don’t want her to do it? Is that what you’re driving at?” said Aunt Katharine. She was in no mood now for delays.
“I should just as lief she’d do it as not—I want her to have a good time,” cried Kate, “if—if you only wouldn’t try to make her think as you do about some things.”
It was out now, and the clutch at her throat relaxed.
“Oh,” said Miss Saxon. There was a volume of meaning in the monosyllable as she spoke it, and then her face grew cold and sharp as an icicle. “What things?”
It was really a pity that Kate was not better informed as to her aunt’s peculiar views. But she caught at the one which had offended her most, and thrust it forward roughly. “About hating everything, especially the men,” she cried, “and not wanting girls to be married. They say you want to leave your money to somebody who’ll promise to stay single all her life.”
Miss Saxon started, and a faint pink color rose in her cheeks, old and wrinkled as they were. “Did your sister tell you that?” she demanded.
“No,” said Kate, “I don’t know as she ever heard of it till I told her. I told her last night, and how I felt about it, too.”
“And she said—?” queried Miss Saxon. The pink was still in her cheeks.
“Well,” said Kate—she hesitated a moment and then looked straight at the questioner—“she as good as said it was none of my business, and she’d do what she thought was right whatever came of it.”
“Ah!” said Aunt Katharine, with an accent of relief. “And I presume you didn’t tell her that you were coming here this morning. I see now why you came so early.” She looked at her niece with a faint sarcastic smile, then said coldly, “I am very fond of your sister.”
The words sounded somehow like a threat. The blood mounted in Kate’s face, and she clinched her hands on the sides of her chair. “I know it,” she said, “and so is every one else fond of her. Grandfather likes her just as much as you do. Perhaps it’s new for you to care for a girl as you care for her, but it’s no new thing for Esther. It’s been the way ever since she was little.”
The bearing of the fact on Kate’s ground of quarrel with her aunt was perhaps not clear, but some fine wrinkles gathered in Miss Saxon’s forehead.
“And does Esther like everybody?” she asked, with a returning sharpness.
“She keeps it to herself if she doesn’t,” said Kate. “She’s kind to everybody—most everybody,” she added, with a sudden remembrance of the one person to whom Esther had not of late seemed always kind. “And that’s how she gets into trouble, making everybody like her, with her soft pleasant ways and saying nice things. Oh, I’ve had to stand up for her so many times to keep her from being imposed on! I’m standing up for her now,” she went on passionately. “It’s your ideas you care about, and you want her to take up with them, whether they’ll make her happy or not. But I care for her, and I want to make you stop.”
The old woman’s face had grown as tense as a drawn bow. “So you think my ideas are getting hold of her, do you?” she asked.
“She thinks they are,” cried Kate, “but I don’t believe it. I believe it’s just because she thinks so much of you. But if she should come to feel as you do about all those things, what good would it do? She couldn’t fight for them. Do you think there’s any fight in Esther Northmore?” She threw out her hand with an impatient gesture. “Oh, they say you’re so clever! But you’re not clever at all if you think that. She’d bear things till they broke her heart before she’d fight.”
Miss Saxon’s lips were drawn tight, and her eyes narrowed to a bright dark line, as if these side-lights that Kate had been throwing on Esther’s character had blinded her a little. She did not speak for a moment, and the girl went on hotly, even fiercely.
“You talk about wanting women to be so free and independent, but you want to bind Esther to those ideas of yours and make her carry them out. I’ll tell you what would be the end of it if she should come into your plan. She’d stand by what she promised, but ’twould kill her. She’s made for loving, and for caring about the things we’ve always cared about, and she wouldn’t be happy any other way. She isn’t that kind.”
Aunt Katharine’s lips parted now. They seemed to be as dry as Kate’s had been a little while ago. She leaned forward on her cane and asked a question slowly. “You pretend to know so much about your sister, tell me, do you think there’s anybody she cares for now?”
Kate dropped her head for a moment, but it was no time for evasions. The excitement and strain of the situation were too much for her at last. “No, I don’t,” she said, with the tears springing into her eyes. “But there’s somebody that cares a sight for her; and if she should ever come to care for him she’d be a thousand times happier than she’d ever be with anything you could do for her. Oh, if you should make her promise—if you should leave your money to her—I should hate you as long as I live, and she would hate you, too, after a while.”
Miss Katharine Saxon rose from her seat. She had not been as straight in years, but she trembled from head to foot as she stood there facing the girl.
“Katharine Northmore,—for you’re my namesake, if you do hate me,—” she said slowly, “you’ve said enough. You took upon yourself to do a very impertinent thing when you came down here to give instructions to me. I shall walk by the light I’ve got, and do my duty as I see it, by myself and your sister too. Now go home. And you needn’t be afraid I shall tell Esther you were here. I shan’t shame her nor myself by ever speaking of it.”
But when she was left alone she sank back in her chair, and there was almost a sob in her voice as she said, “If it were only that girl who saw things as I see them!”
The good cry which Kate had been longing for came before she got back to her grandfather’s that morning. She took it with a girlish abandon, sitting on the meadow bridge. Then she rose up, bathed her face in the brook and went on her way, half ashamed of what she had done, half wondering that she had dared to do it, and wholly glad that it was over. Tom was waiting for her at the bars below the barn. It helped the appearance of things that she should go in with him to breakfast, and, though he would have scorned to own it, Tom had a healthy curiosity as to the outcome of this interview with Aunt Katharine.
Kate’s report of it was meagre; but the impression was left on his mind that she had gotten rather the worst of it, especially as she made no concealment of the fact that she had been summarily dismissed at the end. She owned frankly that she had been crying, and then showed plainly that the spirit of controversy was not dead in her yet by the reckless manner in which she threw in her “Westernisms” and defended them during the rest of their talk. On the whole, Tom felt relieved as to her state of mind, and they went into the house quarrelling in the most natural manner; she having remarked that Aunt Katharine’s fierce manner didn’t “faze” her after she got started, and he protesting that there was no such word in the dictionary. He maintained his point as far as the old Webster in the house was concerned, but she at least proved that her word came of good respectable stock, and stood firm on the proposition that it ought to be there if it wasn’t.
It was the last time for many a day that Kate spoke to any one of that morning’s adventure. Not a suspicion of it dawned on Esther. The talk between the sisters the night before had been too nearly a quarrel for either of them to wish to reopen the subject which had so disturbed them, and it was out of consideration for Kate’s uneasiness over the intimacy with Aunt Katharine that Esther went to her house less often than usual during the next few days. But indeed it was not easy during the week that was left of Kate’s stay at her grandfather’s for either of the girls to find time for anything except the pleasurings which always crowd the last days of a visit. Everything which had been omitted before must be done now, and there were all the little gifts to be prepared for the family at home, tokens of special meaning for each one, and for Mrs. Northmore most of all.
She had asked for a piece of flag-root from the old spot in the meadow, and enough was dug to satisfy her appetite for years, Aunt Elsie preserving some of it in sugar, just as the grandmother used to in the old days, when children carried bits of it to church in their pockets to keep them awake during sermon time. She had mentioned an apple from the crooked tree in the lane, whose seeds always shook in their core like a rattlebox by the first of September, and every apple which ripened on the old farm in the summer had a place in Kate’s trunk. There were odors, too, which she loved; odors of pine, and sweet fern, and life everlasting, to be gathered and sewed into silken bags and pillows; and there was a little bunch—Aunt Elsie tucked it in—of dried hardhack and catnip and spearmint.
“I don’t suppose she ever steeped those things for her own babies, being a doctor’s wife,” she said; “but she knew the taste of them when she was a baby herself, and I guess it’ll bring back the old garret to her, and the bunches that hung from the rafters when she and I used to play there on rainy days.”
Such were the chief events of that last week, but there was one other of some importance, a call from Mr. Philip Hadley, who did not come this time to inquire for his ancestors, but very distinctly for the young ladies, and the fact that their grandfather was absent did not prevent his making a decidedly long call. He seemed extremely interested in all their doings since he saw them last, and the look of pleasure with which he heard the announcement that Esther was to spend the winter in Boston would have convinced Tom, had he seen it, of the correctness of an opinion he had lately expressed to Kate. It did not affect her, however. It was no young man with soft white hands, but only a grim old woman, whose influence she feared for her sister.
So the days went by, swift, hurrying days, and brought the morning of Kate’s departure. Tom would have liked to go with her to the depot, but it was the grandfather, with the girls, of course, who made the trip. They said good-by to each other in a last interview at the barn, and though each tried to be gay and off-hand, the effort was not very successful. They made solemn compact to write to each other often, Tom for his part agreeing to keep his “eye peeled” for any developments concerning Esther, and Kate for hers promising to “watch out” for anything that could interest him in affairs at the West.
“You must come out and see us, Tom,” she said earnestly. “I want to show you everything, and make you like our part of the country as well as—as well as I like this. Your ways are different from ours, of course; but I’ve got a lot of new ideas, and I’ve had an awfully good time with you, Tom. I didn’t know I could feel so bad to go away.”
“I guess I should like it out your way too,” said Tom, turning his head as if it were not quite safe to look into her eyes at that moment, “and perhaps sometime I can come. I guess it’s good for folks to see something besides their own things, and—I know I should like it out West if you were there.”
And then they parted, each of them having apparently some trouble with the throat just then, and Tom drawing his sleeve across his eyes in a suspicious manner as he walked down the lane.
“The Lord bless and keep you and cause His face to shine upon you,” Ruel Saxon said solemnly as he bade the girl good-by at the depot.
It was the last word before the train pulled out, for Esther’s heart was full, and she could say no more after sending her love for the thousandth time to them all at home. And then the beautiful New England village, with its lovely homes and shaded streets, faded from Kate’s sight; the hills and the little fields, crossed by the old stone walls, rushed past her, and it was the wide green stretches of the home country for which the eyes of her heart were straining as she flew on into the West.
It was a great day for the family when she reached home. The doctor was at the depot, impatient as a boy over the three minutes’ delay in the train that brought her in, and he almost forgot to secure her trunk, or set her bag into the carriage, in his delight at seeing her.
“Well, I believe they must have treated you pretty well back there,” he said, pinching her cheek. And he would have had her on the scales before she left the depot if she had not protested that she could not spare a second getting weighed.
“I shall lose a pound for every minute we waste getting home,” she cried, jumping into the carriage; and at this he laughed, and putting the reins into her hands, told her to get the gray filly over the ground as fast as she pleased. How they did go dashing down the road, and what wonder that excitement was rife in the town that afternoon as to what member of the community was lying at the point of death that the doctor was going at such a rate to see him!
They were on the porch to greet her when she pulled up at the door, Mrs. Northmore and Virgie, with Aunt Milly gorgeous in her best cap and kerchief at the rear; and such a hugging and kissing, such a laughing and crying followed as might have made one wonder what would have happened if the girl had stayed away a year instead of a single summer.
It was good to be back—so good; she realized it more with every minute, and the trite old saying that the best part of going away from home is coming back again appealed to her as never before. The trunk was unpacked with all the household gathered round, but no one, not even Mrs. Northmore, daring to help, lest some precious token, tucked safely in by Kate’s own hand, should be drawn prematurely from its corner or shaken unwarily from the folds of a dress. Oh, the joy of drawing them out, one after another, and the bursts of delight with which they were received!
Virgie skipped about the room in glee over the trinkets which had been brought to her from Boston and the sea; Dr. Northmore declared he must have coffee made at once to give him a chance of using the beautiful cup which Stella had painted with just such blossoming honeysuckles as grew over the door from which he had carried away his bride; Aunt Milly stood agape over the glories of the black silk apron which her young ladies had embroidered for her in figures of the gayest colors—Jack Horner enjoying his Christmas pie in one corner, Miss Muffet frightened from her curds by the wicked black spider in another, and the muffin man with his tray on his head stalking proudly between; while as for Mrs. Northmore, she sat like a little child, her lap filling with treasures, nibbling now and then at the flag-root, or burying her face in those dear old odors, and lifting it again with smiles shining through the tears in her eyes.
Not till the very bottom of the trunk had been reached was it emptied of its last gift, and then there was plenty of need for the mother’s help; for the putting away of her scattered wardrobe was a task to which Kate could not quiet her excited nerves. She was almost too happy to eat, but the supper Aunt Milly had made ready would have put the edge of appetite on satiety itself.
“Why, Aunt Milly, a body’d think I was a regular prodigal, to have such a feast as this set out for me,” she declared, at the close of the meal, when it seemed as if every one of her favorite dainties had been heaped upon her plate in turn, but the old woman shook her head at this with emphasis.
“No ye ain’t, honey,” she said, “your Aunt Milly never did have no use for prodigals” (she would probably not have recognized any member of her family in that character, however he might have wasted his substance), “but I allers did ’low that them that’s a comfort to you were the ones to fix for. ’Pears to me that was a terrible mean-spirited man in the Bible that never let ’em set out a kid or anything for the boy that was so good ’n’ steady. I’d have done it, if I’d been cookin’ for ’em, sure nuff I would.”
It was, perhaps, the devoted old servant who had pined most for Kate’s return, and it was certainly she who was most anxious to have the girl all to herself now that she had fairly come. Mrs. Northmore could wait. The things she cared most to know would be learned best in the unsolicited confidences of the days that were coming, and she feigned some errand for herself in the edge of evening which gave the girl a chance to sit for a little while in the kitchen, with the old woman questioning her and crooning over her out of the depths of an abounding love.
“We’ve missed you powerful bad, honey,” she said, rocking back and forth, with her eyes fixed in a beaming content on the girl’s face. “’Spect they didn’t put much of it into the letters, but I tell you your ma’s been mighty lonesome some of the time. I could see it, if the rest couldn’t; and your pa—you could tell how he felt by the way he fretted if the letters didn’t come jes’ so often. And ’tween you ’n’ me he didn’t like it much to have Esther stay all winter, only your ma worked him round, the way she has, you know. Bless your heart, if they’d wanted you to stay too, dunno what would ’a’ happened to us. ’Spect this yer ole woman would ’a’ been dead ’n’ gone before spring. I’ve been pinin’ for you all summer.”
“But I shouldn’t have stayed if they had wanted me,” Kate said cheerfully, and then she added with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes, “but really, Aunt Milly, you don’t look as if you had been pining. It rather seems to me you’ve grown a little stouter since we went away.”
“Laws now, Miss Kate,” cried Aunt Milly, “that’s jes’ some o’ your jokin’.” Then, smoothing her ample front with an uneasy expression, she added beseechingly: “But you can’t tell by the looks o’ folks what’s goin’ on inside of ’em. I was powerful puny a spell back. Your pa’ll tell you how much medicine he giv’ me.” Then, her face brightening again: “But you or’ to see the way I began to pick up when the day was set for you to come home. ’Peared like the misery jes’ cleared out of itself, an’ I reckon I did get back the flesh I lost, with maybe a little more,” she ended serenely.
“Well, I hope the misery’ll stay away for good, now I’ve come,” said Kate, laughing. The sound of voices in the hall told her that a bevy of friends had come to welcome her home, and with another smile at Milly she was off to meet them, and to begin all over again the account of her beautiful summer.
The warmth with which the Western town greets its returning children is one of the pleasant things to have known in one’s journey through life. For the next few days Kate’s time was full, responding to the welcome of her friends, asking and answering questions, and adjusting herself again to her own place.
There was one friend for whom she inquired early, and of him Mrs. Elwell brought the fullest report when she brought her own greeting to the girl next morning. Morton had hardly been at home all summer. He had been busy, first at one thing, then another, as Kate knew, and now—it was quite a sudden move—he was with an engineering party in an adjoining county. It seemed he had given some special attention to surveying during the last year in college, and, like everything else he gave his mind to, had it so well in hand that it turned to his use and advantage. The work would keep him a few weeks longer, which would make him late in getting back to school, but the pay was so good he had felt he must make the most of his chance. She gave one of those little sighs which every one understood when she talked of her nephew, and then her face brightened as she added, “But he’ll certainly come home before he goes back to college, and we shall see him before so very long.”
At which Kate’s face brightened too. There was no one now whom she wanted so much to see as Morton Elwell.
It was a divided stream in which the current of our story flowed during the days that followed, and a quiet stream it seemed at first after the dash and sparkle of the summer. A week more and Kate was busy with her books again, beginning her last year in the Rushmore High School. Tom Saxon was in school too, and Stella had flitted back to Boston, ready to settle down in that pretty studio of hers, with her art and her pupils. Esther alone was at leisure, but even for her the time passed swiftly. Aunt Elsie gave her a willing share in the light work of the household, and her grandfather claimed her more and more as a companion in all his goings, and a listener to his tales in the lengthening evenings.
Then there were the visits to Aunt Katharine, and few were the days in which they were omitted. The sight of the girl always brought a smile to the face of the lonely old woman. She was, if possible, more kind than ever, and yet, though Esther could not have explained it, she felt with a puzzled wonder that there was somehow a difference. Not for long had Aunt Katharine talked in the old passionate way of those peculiar views which she held so dear and vital. She seemed less eager than once to impress them, and Esther noted it, resenting more and more that fancy of her sister’s that the proud-spirited old woman would have taken undue advantage of her influence, or have wished to put compulsion on another’s life and thought.
It was a pity Kate did not know the true state of the case. As it was she sent an anxious thought every now and then in the direction of Aunt Katharine, and shook her fist, metaphorically speaking, in the face of those ideas which she imagined her to be always urging. In regard to anything else she refused to be solicitous over her sister, though Tom, who actually wrote a letter once a week for the first month, did his best to disturb her. The “nabob” was not only calling oftener than ever,—and this in the absence of Stella,—but the grandfather and Esther had been invited to visit at his summer home in Hartridge, a visit which they had made, and, according to reports on their return, enjoyed immensely.
“You can pay your money and take your choice, of course,” Tom wrote derisively at the end of this interesting news, which he sent in advance of Esther herself, “but it’s ancestors or Esther, you can count on that. Maybe the young men out your way care more about their great-great-grandfathers than they do about girls, but in this part of the country it would be safer to bet on the girl.”
Kate sniffed at this, and responded promptly that the young men in her part of the country, so far as she was acquainted with them, didn’t trouble themselves about their great-great-grandfathers at all; and the mental workings of one who gave his time to the business—as Mr. Hadley certainly did in the earlier part of the summer—were beyond her. To which she added—what was clearly another matter—that even if Mr. Hadley had taken a fancy to Esther, it was by no means certain that she had a fancy for him.
She waited with some impatience for Esther’s account of the visit, and the letter which came shortly certainly bore out Tom’s impression that she had enjoyed it. It seemed that Mr. Hadley’s father was extremely anxious to meet Deacon Saxon, but being somewhat infirm of health and indisposed for so long a ride, had urgently begged the old gentleman to come to him,—with his granddaughter, of course,—and the two had taken the drive to Hartridge one day with all the pleasure in life. The Hadleys’ summer home, Esther wrote, was perfectly beautiful, much more so in outward aspect than the Boston house, with its straight brown front, and inside it was apparently a bower of loveliness. Such simple but elegant furnishings, such devices for making summer leisure redolent of rest and culture! Ah! It was a theme to inspire her pen, and she grew fairly eloquent over it.
It appeared, too, that Mr. Hadley had been more charming than ever, and his family were delightful. There had been a married sister from Boston there on a visit who had been more than gracious to Esther, and had assured her that she should count on seeing much of her during the winter. Altogether, it seemed to have been an idyllic day. Kate read the letter aloud to the family, then laid it down without joining in the general comment. She was half vexed that her sister should have had so good a time, and she really wished that Mr. Philip Hadley were not quite so agreeable.
But there were certain other people whose agreeable qualities she did not find so exasperating. The sight of one of them, coming to the house that afternoon in the edge of twilight, sent her flying out to meet him with a cry of delight.
“Mort Elwell!” she exclaimed, almost running into his arms; “oh, but I’m glad to see you!”
“Well, you’d better believe I’m glad to see you,” he replied. And then they clasped hands and beamed at each other for a minute like brother and sister.
“My! how tall you’re getting! Has Esther been growing like that this summer?” he demanded, as they walked together to the house.
“The first question, of course,” she replied, trying to pout. “I’m sure I can’t tell. I don’t believe there’s any difference in me, only you’ve forgotten how I looked when I went away.”
Forgotten! Not he. He protested that he remembered just how high she had come above his shoulders when she stood on the threshing machine that day last summer. And then they both laughed. How long ago it seemed, that harvesting at the farm!
“But it seems longer to us than to you, Mort, I know it does,” said the girl. “So much has happened to us, and we’ve seen so many different places.”
“I’ve seen a few places myself, if you please,” he retorted, “and there’s more difference in them than you’d think, especially when it comes to the eating. But there are other things, besides going around, to make time seem long to a body.”
They welcomed him in the house with such affectionate cordiality as might have been extended to one very dear and near of kin. Mrs. Northmore’s eyes grew bright and moist at the sight of him; and the doctor, who had stretched himself on the lounge five minutes before in a state of exhaustion, declaring that nothing short of a case of apoplexy could make him budge off it that evening, fairly bounded across the room at the sight of Morton, and shook his hand with a heartiness suggestive of exuberant vitality.
“When did you get home?” was the first question when the greetings were over, and “When are you going away?” followed, without waiting for answer.
“I just got in on the train this noon,” said Morton, “and I’m going to-morrow morning. Can’t spend any time loafing, you know, for the term began a month ago, and I must get there now as soon as I can.”
“And you’ll have back work to make up the very first thing,” said Mrs. Northmore. “It’s too bad to work so hard all summer and then start into your studies at such a disadvantage.”
“I think I can manage that all right,” said the young man, confidently. “I’ve got money enough to make the ends meet for a while, without doing any outside work, and it won’t take me long to catch up.”
“Well, don’t make too brilliant a run, Mort,” said the doctor, dryly. “I hate to see a good proverb spoiled; and all work and no play ought to make Jack a dull boy, if it doesn’t.”
“I rather think Jack’s a dull boy to start with, if it knocks him out in one season,” said the young man, laughing.
He was so modest, so manly, and his buoyant energy was so refreshing, that it was no wonder they all sat looking at him as if they had a personal pride in his doings.
“But at least you won’t have to teach school this winter,” said Mrs. Northmore.
“Not unless somebody relieves me of what I’ve earned this summer,” said Morton, lightly. “In that case I’ll speak for my old place again.”
“I’ll warrant they’d let you have it,” said the doctor.
“Oh, they’ve made me the offer, already,” said Morton; “besides, I hold a first-grade certificate to teach in that county, and I might miss it on examination somewhere else.”
“Not much danger of that, I fancy,” said Mrs. Northmore, and the doctor added, growling, “Those examinations are a good deal of a humbug. For my part, I think a few oral questions put to a fellow straight out would be worth as much as all that written stuff.” He had been a county examiner once himself, and had a painful remembrance of the “stuff,” which, to tell the truth, his wife had mostly examined for him.
“I rather think an oral question that was put to me helped me in my examination,” said Morton, a gleam of amused remembrance coming into his eyes. “Did I ever tell you about that? I had just finished one set of papers and gone up to the desk for another, when one of the examiners, a dry, shrewd-looking old fellow, leaned over and put this question to me: ‘When turkeys are six and three-fourths dollars per dozen, how many may be had for two dollars eighty-one cents and one-fourth?’”
“The mean thing!” ejaculated Kate. “He didn’t expect you to figure that out in your head, right then and there, did he?”
“He expected an answer,” said Morton, “and do you know, as good luck would have it, I hit it at the first shot, and gave it to him in a quarter of a minute. I told him five, and that was right.”
“Well,” gasped the doctor, “talk about lightning calculators!”
“But I didn’t calculate it,” laughed the young man. “I told you ’twas luck. You see I knew the answer, being turkeys, must be a whole number, and the sum named was less than half the price of a dozen, so it couldn’t be six, and I took the chances on five. The man that asked the question saw through it, of course, and I believe he sort of liked me after that. But look here, who cares about county examinations or what I did last winter? I want to hear about this summer, and how you liked New England. Start in, Kate, and tell me everything.”
“‘Only that and nothing more?’” she said, lifting her hands. “Why, I intend to give out my experiences sparingly, and embellish my conversation with them for the rest of my life. But we did have a glorious time—I’ll tell you so much. And New England’s great. If you’ve any doubts on that point you may as well give them up right here and now. It’s funny, some of it, of course; the little fields, and the stone walls, and the ox-teams—but you get used to those things, you know; and the people are nice. It’s the next best thing to living out here—it really is—to live in the Old Bay State, as grandfather calls it.”
And then, with an abandon which hardly tallied with her avowed intention to keep some capital for future use, she threw herself into the doings on the old farm, the attractions of New England villages, and the delights—oh! the delights of Boston and the sea, with his eager questions drawing her on and fresh items suggesting themselves at every turn.
It lengthened itself into a long delicious evening, and after a little the young people had it all to themselves, for the doctor was called off, and not to a case of apoplexy either, only to a child who had put a button into his ear; and a neighbor dropped in, to whose troubles Mrs. Northmore must give her sympathizing attention.
There was one subject on which the young man’s interest showed itself keen at a score of points in the course of Kate’s vivacious talk. Did Esther look at this and that as her sister did? Did she note the contrasts with a touch of pride and pleasure in the ways at home? Was she wholly glad to stay behind? And might it not be longer than the winter, much longer perhaps, before she would be at home again.
As to the last point Kate eagerly denied the danger. The other questions she answered more slowly, but with her usual frankness. Esther had been more in love with New England than herself; she had not criticised things—oh, dear, she had never quarrelled with anybody in behalf of her native state; and she had been perfectly delighted with the invitation to stay, there could be no doubt of that. And then she was silent, her face lengthening a little, as she thought of the one who gave the invitation.
The young man had listened with the closest attention while she talked, and he gave a little sigh when she finished. “I’m afraid I shan’t know as much about things that are happening there now as I did before you came away,” he said wistfully. “You were ever so good about writing to me, Kate. I haven’t had but one letter since you came away.”
His eyes wandered as he spoke to that letter with its well-known writing lying on the table, and it was not the first time since he came in that they had moved in that direction. Kate noted the hungry look, and felt mean.
“We had one to-day, and she is perfectly well,” she said uneasily. And then she would have changed the subject but that Virgie, who was so little given to conversation that her occasional contributions were the more dangerous, spoke up just then and said it was such an interesting letter, all about a visit Esther had made with grandfather; Kate had read it to them all, and it was beautiful.
“Can’t I hear it too?” said Morton, boldly.
There was no help for it now, and Kate walked soberly to the table. There were one or two passages she would certainly have left out, but Virgie, who had read it three times, would be likely enough to call attention to the omissions, and that would make the business worse. So she went straight through it, with a certain hardness of tone when allusions were made to the charming qualities of Mr. Philip Hadley which made them all the more emphatic.
Morton Elwell’s eyes did not move from her face as she read. Indeed, there was a tenseness about his expression at moments which suggested that he was holding his breath.
“So you see grandfather’s taking her into all the gayeties,” Kate said rather nervously, as she laid down the letter. “She’s a wonderful favorite with grandfather.”
Morton drew his hand across his forehead. “This Mr. Hadley is the one who went to the graveyard with her, isn’t he? Esther wrote me about that.”
“Yes, only ’twas Stella he was with,” said Kate. “Esther was with grandfather.”
The exact arrangement of the party was apparently not the main interest just then for Morton. “And he showed you around Boston and Cambridge and those other places afterward, didn’t he?” he queried.
“Yes, we did a good deal of sight-seeing together,” said Kate, and then she added hurriedly, “he and Stella are tremendously up in art, and that’s why he went to some places with us. He wanted to show her a picture in his own house for one thing. Maybe Esther wrote you about that too.”
“But he knows Stella’s gone from your grandfather’s now, doesn’t he?” said the young man. There were apparently other things besides the price of turkeys in regard to which he could draw quick deductions, and his eyes searched Kate’s at that moment with a look that was straight and keen.
“I don’t know but he does,” she said almost pettishly.
There was a minute’s silence, and somehow it occurred to Morton Elwell just then that the hour was growing late.
“I must be going home,” he said. “Aunt Jenny’ll wonder what has become of me.”
He said good night to Virgie, and stopped in the hall a minute for a word with Mrs. Northmore. Kate was beside him. “I’ll go down to the gate with you,” she said, as she had said many a time before, and he seemed to expect it.
But when they were fairly beyond the porch, in the shadows of the shrubbery, he slipped his arm through hers, and said very quietly: “Kate, I wish you’d tell me the truth about this Mr. Hadley. He’s coming to see Esther, of course. Is he in love with her?”
“I don’t know that he is. I never saw a thing to make me think so,” said Kate, with low vehemence. And then (for there was a frankness in her which would not let her stop there) she added: “Tom says he is; but Tom made up his mind to that right at the start, and he’s the most obstinate boy I ever saw about his own opinions. He never changes his mind, no matter what good reasons you may show him on the other side.”