"You're your mother's comforter, Happie, my sunshine!" cried Mrs. Scollard, leaning towards her second daughter to pat the tousled head bent as its owner stooped to tuck in a blanket.
"And your adopted aunt's reliance," added Miss Keren-happuch unexpectedly from the adjoining room. And Happie felt that life was not without promise.
Miss Bradbury tucked little Penny away with her until her mother should be well enough to take her into her room. Laura and Polly were roommates, as they had been in the Patty-Pans, and Margery and Happie slept together, as they had all their lives.
The two eldest girls whispered long after they had gone to bed, and silence had fallen upon the Ark. Happie was too excited to sleep, Margery too miserable. To the eldest girl it seemed as if the life upon which she had entered was going to prove unbearable, but to the younger there appeared on the distant horizon gleams of hope. There was a certain charm in all this discomfort, and that view was really sublime. After Margery ceased to reply to her whispered remarks, Happie still lay awake, planning, speculating, beginning to hope, yet half crying too, as she remembered the dear Patty-Pans, and the only home she had ever known, the great, noisy, ugly, splendid city. But at last her mind settled down to contemplation of those glorious mountains stretching away before her window, waiting for her to see them in the morning, guarding her while she slept. In the thought of them she found comfort, and gazing upon them in imagination, she fell asleep.
Happie was awakened "in her chamber towards the east" by the sun streaming in upon her, and with a vague impression that the house was on fire. Never had there been such a blaze of light at that hour in New York, never at any hour such a resplendent, rosy glare. In the girls' little chamber at home it had been at best but a lighter shade of gray light, chastened by the air shaft, that summoned them to a new day.
Happie sprang up to greet the dawn and to look out at her mountains—already it gave her a thrill of pleasure to feel that they were her mountains.
She awakened her sister with her cry of delight, Surely it was going to be worth suffering much discomfort and deprivation to waken every morning to such beauty as this. And when one remembered that the beauty was to restore their mother, what did exile and more or less furniture matter?
More beautiful than when clad in verdure the trees stood outlined against the eastern sky, their perfect symmetry of line and limb thrown into relief by the sunrise glow. Mists tinged with every exquisite tint of color flowed around the mountainsides like the soft draperies of Aurora. Quietly brown at her feet lay the waiting fields, except where the rye of autumn's sowing was beginning to hint of coming green. Pines and firs stood black against the sky, while the faintest tone of red showed to a keen eye that the maple buds were forming and the fresh sap running.
The glad bird chorus of later spring was wanting, but the blithe, brave bluebird uttered his cheering note, liquid as the brooks which taught it to him, and the robin defied possible frosts with his clarion whistle, sounds the more delightful that they were the only spring anthems yet audible.
Laura and Polly fluttered into the room as they heard Happie's exclamation. Happie turned towards them with a shining face.
"Oh, girls, oh, Margery, isn't it heavenly?" she cried in an ecstasy. "Really we must be happy here no matter how we hate it!"
A remark which her sisters hailed with such a shout of laughter that it cheered their mother's waking across the hall.
"The Lord is in His holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before Him," said Margery softly. "I never before realized what that meant."
Even Laura scrambled into her clothes with considerable cheerfulness after this auspicious beginning of the beginning, and the four girls got down-stairs in good time and in good spirits.
But alas! for the weakness of human nature and the brief duration of its exalted moods! When they began to grapple with the problem of getting breakfast, and of persuading the stove to burn the wood which Bob had piled ready to hand the night before, as if he had long been a country boy used to gathering fuel, the benediction of the dawn began to lose effect.
"Maybe we'd better wait for mother and Aunt Keren to advise us," said Happie at last, sitting back on her heels with ashes on her hair and despair on her face, having vainly blown the fire through the draughts which did not draw.
"What's up?" inquired Bob entering in time to catch her suggestion. "Say, I have to wash at the pump like a farm hand! I hope that freight car will come to-day."
"We're up. So is mother—I heard her—but she isn't down," said Happie. "This fire is too much for me, Bob."
"Don't you mean it is too little for you?" suggested Bob. "I don't see how it possibly can be too much for you—there's none at all. I'll have a try at it; I learned a trick about it last night. You have to light the fire in the southeast corner of the grate—it's not cracked there."
Bob's knowledge of the geography of the cracked stove stood him in good stead, and when Miss Bradbury and Mrs. Scollard came down the fire was under way.
Miss Keren-happuch cracked her egg with a decisive blow on the edge of a saucer—her establishment did not boast an egg cup.
"That Shale stratum which brought our trunks, and Bob and Happie, last night, is going to lend himself, with the aid of Peter Kuntz, our driver, to bringing up our household goods to-day, if the car gets here, as they think it will," she said. "I never realized how appropriately one's effects might be called goods—they will indeed be goods to us in this dearth of everything. And the first thing I shall do will be to find a woman to preside over our housework, for I suspect that will be the attitude these independent farmers' wives will take towards it. Bob, perhaps you had better look after the carting, and we two Keren-happuchs, Happie my dear, will look for the woman—as the proverb advises one to do whenever there is trouble."
"Why not ask Jake Shale if he knows of one? He is coming now," suggested Mrs. Scollard. Miss Bradbury hurried out to the steps.
"What is?" the family within heard him ask. "Some one to help you out? I guess. Mebbe she might help you a little first along."
"She?" repeated Miss Bradbury.
"Her, yes," said Jake. "We hain't got so much work now to our place, but she couldn't do it long."
"Oh, your wife!" exclaimed Miss Bradbury, enlightened. "If you will bring her here, I will not look for any one else. You are sure she'll come?"
"I guess," affirmed Jake. And he drove away with Bob on the seat beside him.
The family hailed them with delight reappearing at noon, seated on familiar crates piled high on the wagon. Jake not only brought his wife when he came down in the afternoon, but his elongated son of eighteen, who opened boxes industriously, but who could not be persuaded to open his mouth.
As fast as Noah Shale pried open crates, his father and Bob carried their contents to their place, and the new stove, their own chairs, rugs, and the best beloved of the pictures, which were hurried into something like order that afternoon, gave the forlorn old Ark a very different aspect by the second night from that which it had worn on the family's arrival.
Miss Bradbury surveyed her house by lamp-light—for she had bought oil—with an amused criticism that held the germ of approval.
"Who can kalsomine?" she demanded suddenly of Mrs. Jake passing out of the room to get a few sticks of wood for the hearth which to the joy of all the exiles they found in the living-room, and with a perfect draught.
"What is?" said Mrs. Shale stopping short. "I kin, fer one, and he kin, and the boy could if he wanted, and you could—most anybody, I guess, that wants to. Why did you want to know?"
"I'm going to make these walls clean, at least, upstairs and down," said Miss Bradbury, pointing to the blackened walls and ceilings which seemed to indicate that the wood-fire on the hearth had not always crackled and snapped as it was then doing.
"Make it look whiter," remarked Mrs. Shale, resuming her way with a slightly superfluous statement.
Not only did grass have no chance to grow under Miss Bradbury's feet; it could not so much as sprout. By the next day Jake Shale, young Noah Shale and Peter Kuntz were all wielding kalsomine brushes upstairs and down in the Ark, with Bob as an understudy learning with each stroke to make the next one better.
White and sweet with lime on the morning of the fifth day of life in it, the Ark reflected the sunshine on the wall of Happie's room when she opened her eyes and aroused Margery.
They found Miss Bradbury in the living-room, bending over a trunk that had not heretofore been opened. She turned to meet the girls' bright faces with a smile on her own, and held up her finger warningly.
"It's only five o'clock," she whispered. "Don't wake your mother. This comes of having such brilliant walls to make our eastward-looking chambers light in the morning, girls. I hurried to dress, thinking it was fully half-past six—my clock had stopped. This is the trunk of silkalines and other possibilities of beauty at ten cents the yard. Come and choose the color and pattern for the curtains in your own room, Margery and Happie." She threw out several rolls of the prettiest materials, and the girls plunged into them ecstatically.
"Oh, Aunt Keren, do you think it would matter to any one else if we had this in our room?" cried Margery holding up a roll of silkaline, white with soft green maiden hair fern wandering over it.
"But only look at this yellow jasmine, Margery!" cried Happie, holding up a rival pattern.
"But green for our room with the morning sunshine to lighten it—would you mind, Aunt Keren?" persisted Margery.
"Why should I tell you to choose if I minded?" said Aunt Keren, but the pleasure in her eyes at their pleasure belied the gruffness of her manner.
That day the entire population of the Ark, excepting Penny and Dorée, but including Polly, worked on window curtains, hemming as fast as feminine fingers could fly, and tacking and hanging as fast as Bob could work.
When the sunset breeze wandered around the Ark, it found lovely wistaria blossoms in their green leaves to flutter in Mrs. Scollard's windows; the yellow jasmine responded to his fingers in Miss Keren-happuch's room; Bob offered him crimson roses, Laura and Polly's windows were hung with sweet pea blossoms, while the soft maiden hair fern blew into the two eldest girls' room, brushing lightly against the white counterpane on their bed. The newly kalsomined walls looked fresh and restful, and the sash curtains transformed the exterior scene, still bleak and forbidding.
But the Ark was doomed to ride on troublous waters for a time. The next day Mrs. Jake announced that she must return to her bereft family, and Miss Bradbury vainly went abroad in search of her successor.
"There is nothing for it, Charlotte and other children," said Miss Bradbury, after two days of scouring the country in Jake Shale's open wagon, "but for me to go to town and find some one there. Though how I shall persuade a person accustomed to city improvements, or pretty summer cottages, to come to our primitive Ark, I can't imagine. However, I shall go down on Monday to try."
"Oh! And leave us alone!" cried Margery.
"Yes, all of you alone. How can one leave 'us' alone? It doesn't seem likely on the face of it that half a dozen Scollards could miss one ancient Bradbury, does it?" said Miss Keren-happuch.
"You are the Head of the House, and it is hard to be decapitated, Aunt Keren," said Bob. But decapitated they were on Monday, when the weather wept copiously over their bereavement.
The inmates of the Ark awakened to the swish of rain against the small window panes, and to the thought of Miss Bradbury's departure. They discovered that in the few weeks that had passed since Mrs. Scollard was taken ill, Miss Bradbury had come to seem as much and necessary a part of their lives as their own heads and hands.
Happie and Bob met with dismal faces to offer their morning oblations of wood to the stove.
"If the violets would come, I could bear it better," remarked Happie suddenly.
"If the mud would dry up, and the roads get decent I could bear it better," retorted Bob. It was becoming a family joke, the number of things which they discovered would make life in the Ark bearable. For each of the family felt in the bottom of a courageous heart that the new conditions were hard to bear, and every night Happie lay down lonely and discouraged to wonder how she was going to face another day. Somehow, though, that other day never would seem dreadful to her when she opened her eyes upon it. It was always so beautiful, seen in the light of the sun mounting over the hills before her chamber window.
"I have engaged our friend Pete Kuntz to make the garden this week during my absence, and to put out our vegetables. Pete doesn't plant; he 'puts out' seeds. I shall expect Bob to keep it watered if nature fails us, as I should think she would have to after this flood—no wonder we call this house the Ark!" said Miss Bradbury, as she pulled on her gauntlets, and walked towards the door where Jake Shale was waiting with his drooping steeds to take her to the station. "And good-bye, my family. I shall return with my shield, and not upon it, for by fair means, if possible, but somehow in any case, I shall inveigle a woman up here to work for us."
She nodded to each one, patted Mrs. Scollard on the shoulder as she passed her—Miss Bradbury was not given to kissing—went out the door into the drenching rain, mounted the dismal wagon and slowly drove away.
"Now, motherkins, and other girls," said Happie, wheeling towards the door to hide her eyes, and hoping that the rising inflection which she had forced into her voice might be mistaken for the ring of happiness, "now, let's go up attic! We youngsters have been aching to get at it. I'd like to see if rain on the old attic roof sounds as sweet as poetry says it does—it's a good day to test it."
Margery sighed and Laura groaned. "It's perfectly dreadful!" she said. "I don't see how you can help minding such weather! Think of living here in such storms as this!"
"Yet fancy moving every time the weather changed, Laura," Happie retorted. "We would have to leave an order with Pete Kuntz, Jake Shale and some other teamsters like this: When the sun shines, don't come. If it looks cloudy, keep your horses ready to start if it rains. Then when it rains, hook up, as you would say, and drive right over to the Ark, to move the Scollards, because the third Scollard girl can't live in that house in stormy weather. Don't you think it might be hard to make them understand, Laura? For instance, what would they do if it was cloudy and misting a little? Or how would they know what to do in a shower? No; it's better to live in a house and never mind the weather once you have moved in."
Happie had rattled on, one eye on her mother's face, and was rewarded by her laughing a little when she stopped; her nonsense usually made her mother smile.
"Such a goose-girl, Happie!" she exclaimed. And Happie did not mind Laura's pouting at being made fun of, for she had accomplished what she had set out to do, and had tided her mother over the first consciousness of being left alone.
"I hope Aunt Keren will find a nice, clean, rosy-faced girl to help us, Margery," said Mrs. Scollard, as they mounted atticward.
"I wouldn't mind if she weren't young, and was as brown as a berry, if only she were nice and clean, mama," said Margery pensively.
"Poor daughter! I'm afraid you find exile harder than the rest of us," said her mother, laying her hand on pretty Margery's arm.
"Not a bit!" declared Margery quickly. "It isn't hard for any of us, for you are getting better!"
The steep attic stairs, intended apparently "for the use of flies," Happie remarked, issued into the single gabled room running the entire length and width of the house, dusty and musty, dark in the heavy storm, yet attractive with the charm no attic can escape. Happie plunged under the eaves, followed by Penny and Dorée, who had come up with them, the former singing in her crooning voice that sounded very like the latter's purring, which was loud, for the yellow kitten expected mice.
"There's an old trunk in here, motherums, a little hair trunk that has gone quite bald in spots," Happie called in a muffled voice from under the eaves. "It's as shabby as a trunk can be, but there are things in it—it is heavy—and there's a B in brass nails on one end. The Bittenbenders must have left it here. May we open it? What has become of the Bittenbenders? What was a Bittenbender anyway? And why did they go off and leave Aunt Keren their house, furnished, too, after its way, and with their worn-off-horsehair trunk left behind?" And Happie emerged from her dusty exploration, rubbing her nose violently, and making up queer faces to keep from sneezing.
Her mother laughed. "I don't know what a Bittenbender was, Happie dear, any more than you do. We know it was—collectively—the family who owned this farm, and who owed Aunt Keren more money than this place was worth, which was all that she could get in payment. Though if this farm were taken care of, it could be made a good one. As to the trunk, I'm sure Aunt Keren did not insist on that as a part of her bargain—it must have been left because it was not worth taking."
"Don't open the trunk to-day, Hapsie," protested Margery. "I don't like the rain on the roof nearly as well as I thought that I should. And it's leaking around that gable, and it is so dark and damp and dismal! Let's go down to the kitchen where it is warm and comparatively cheerful. At least the fire is red! Truly I can't stand this dank, dark, dreary, dusty, dismal hole and the beat of that rain."
"Poor Peggy! She's getting her adjectives high, and her spirits low!" cried Happie. "What is it about attic salt? Hers is lumpy from wet weather. Come on, you poor dear! We'll go down to the kitchen and boil eggs. Mother, when do you suppose we shall get anything to eat besides eggs? I asked Jake, and he said the butcher began coming through in June. Now what in the world does the butcher come through? And aren't we to have any meat till he has come through it? We cannot possibly live on eggs till June. We've cooked them in every way by this time, and they still come out eggs—more or less so, at least. For:
Laura, go first if you want to be noble, and be the cushion at the bottom of the heap of your family when we all tumble down these breakneck attic stairs!"
"Happie, what an absurd girl you are!" cried Margery. "Jake Shale meant that the butcher came through Crestville after June, carrying meat to the hotels beyond, and then we can get it easily enough. But it is serious business getting it till then. Aunt Keren said she would bring meat when she came back, and if she buys a horse, as she means to, we can drive somewhere where it is to be had."
"Won't it be fun, jogging around the country picking up a roast here and a chop there?" cried incorrigible Happie. "I hope it will be a horse that we all can drive."
"Aunt Keren said she should buy a cheap horse, too tired to be dangerous, and we are to rest him while we drive," said Laura, unconscious of Miss Bradbury's humor, and repeating with entire gravity this statement at which the others all laughed. "For my part," she added, "I shall be mortified to drive such a horse."
"You can sit on the back seat and look like a guest; Margery and I will drive," said Happie. She danced ahead of the others towards the kitchen, swinging Penny to her shoulder as she ran. She stopped short in the doorway with a shocked little cry.
"What's the matter?" said Margery.
"We have no horse to blush for, but we must blush for ourselves; the bread has run over the pans, and down on the table! Only look! And we are all so hungry! It must be as sour as sour! I'm so scatter-brained!" And Happie pulled her own bright locks with a contrite face, offering Penny the ear nearest the shoulder on which she was seated to be boxed. But Penny kissed her sister's flushed cheek instead.
"It's all my fault," cried Margery repentantly, assuming the blame and the duty of repairing the damage to the snowy pine table at one and the same time. "I promised to look after the bread and put it into the oven, and between Aunt Keren's going and our trip to the attic, I never thought of it again. Bread is not such a simple thing; I wish we could buy our bread, as we did in town."
"No work is simple I find, dear," said her mother. "It takes all kinds of qualities to do anything well—which accounts for the prevalence of poor labor. Never mind the bread; it is beyond sweetening by any amount of soda. We will make more to-night, and subsist on biscuits and buckwheat cakes for dinner and supper."
"Buckwheat cakes are far from simple," Happie remarked, suggestively surveying a burn on her forefinger, the result of her recent failure with the delicacy in question.
"The cakes are simple; it's the griddle where the stick comes," said Margery.
"Literally, if you mean the sticking," smiled her mother.
Laura, standing with her face pressed against the steaming glass of the window pane, sighed heavily. Mrs. Scollard turned and crossing over to her side, looked for a moment out upon the reeking scene. The rain poured down in torrents, swept sidewise across the fields by the roaring wind. The ground looked black at a little distance, the trees bent their bare boughs to the storm's fury; not a sound, not a human being lightened the desolation of the outlook.
The lonely woman felt her heart tighten under the grip of a fresh tide of homesickness. Miss Bradbury had been trying of late to encourage her by hinting that if she were not perfectly restored to health in the autumn, she could spend the winter in the Ark, so at the worst there was no reason for anxiety. But what a life to lead, to condemn her clever children to! How could she bear it? Then the courage that made her all that she was, the courage that Happie had inherited, rose to answer her own question. She could bear it because she must bear it; she would fight for her health, and be able once more to work and to live for her children.
"When this storm has spent itself," she said brightly, "we shall see the spring fairly leaping forward in all its loveliness. This is a sort of aftermath of all winter's fury. It can't last long with such a wind as this raging, and when it passes you girls will find arbutus and hepatica, anemones, and very soon violets. It is going to be a wonderful country for flowers, for all sorts of beauty. I think we shall hear song birds in Crestville that we never heard before, and fancy what it will be to hunt for wild flowers at the foot of those glorious mountains! I think there could hardly be a more splendid view than ours."
Happie crept up and peeped slyly over her mother's shoulder. She saw a moisture on the long lashes that belied the blithe tone and the enthusiasm.
"It's just a trifle dim now, motherums," was all that Happie said, but the tone in which she said it made the words what they were meant to be—the salute of a good soldier to the courage of his superior officer.
"Oh, by and by will be a sweeter by and by, of course," Margery chimed in. "I suppose we shall all feel better when it clears up."
The dinner that day did not promise to be precisely a success. Polly and Penny had risen superior to the weather in such a game of romps that the baby appeared upon the scene decidedly cross. Bob came in wet through and exhausted from a tussle with the barn door which had to be rehung upon its broken hinges to protect the books still lying in their packing cases, stored in the rickety building. He found it impossible to talk; his muscles ached, he had pounded his thumb black and blue in his efforts at carpentering, and creeping chills, the result of his wetting, chased one another down his spine.
All that Happie had said of the preponderance of eggs in their limited bill of fare was strictly true. It was hard to consider a dinner satisfactory when its main dish was scrambled eggs, after one had had boiled eggs for breakfast, and was looking forward to fried eggs for supper. Dishes too had to be washed as they went along, for the supply of kitchen utensils was low until the mistress of the house should return with reinforcements.
"When we were in New York we turned a faucet, and took it for granted that hot water in the sink was a natural institution, like a hot spring. Now that we have to heat every drop we begin to realize it was a sort of phenomenon," sighed Margery, lifting the teakettle to the forward hole of the stove, and signaling Bob to put in another stick of wood before she set it down.
"We will hope that Aunt Keren may find the clean, rosy-cheeked young girl, or even the brown-faced-elderly-woman variation of the theme which Margery suggested," said Mrs. Scollard. "It is rather a struggle alone, without conveniences."
"There's a woman coming down the road, mama," said Polly, whose face, with Penny's, was pressed against the steaming window, looking out upon the universal wetness.
Laura dropped the towel, held ready for wiping dishes, though the water was not yet warm, and ran to look.
"She's very wet, mama, and she's fearfully long," Laura announced.
"And she's heading for here!" cried Bob, as if that were the acme of wonders.
"Can she be a lost Bittenbender?" suggested Happie.
The tall woman came in, when bidden to do so, and set herself, marvelously erect, on the edge of a chair.
"It's a very severe rain," remarked Mrs. Scollard, somewhat at loss how to treat her unexpected visitor.
"I've seen worse rains than this already," retorted the angular one. "Do you like it here?"
"We shall grow to be very fond of the place," said Mrs. Scollard cautiously. "We are trying not to be homesick. You see we have always lived in New York."
"And you are doing your own work yet!" exclaimed the visitor. "I heard you wasn't use to doin' nothin'. It's bad enough to be strangers without takin' all the hard jobs to once, yet! I wouldn't care if I was to help you a while; I've got time."
"Do you mean that you would stay here?" cried Mrs. Scollard, eagerly.
"Yes; I don't care if I do," answered the woman. "You just say so once, and I'll stay."
"Are you a losted Bippenbender? Happie said so," Penny cried shrilly and unexpectedly.
"A Bittenbender? What do you know about the Bittenbenders? No, I hain't a Bittenbender. I'm poor enough in money without bein' poor truck yet. My name's Rosie Gruber," said the stranger with an air of forever setting at rest any possible doubt as to her desirability.
Margery and Happie exchanged a sly glance of amusement; anything less like a rose than their caller would have been hard to find. But the important point was that she was willing to stay and do housework.
Mrs. Scollard, feeling that Miss Keren-happuch's quest was more than uncertain, and that almost any risk was better than their certain troubles, engaged her on the spot, and was as delighted as she was amused to see their new-bloomed Rose take off her wet hat, remove her long overshoes, produce from under the skirt of her own gown a blue checked gingham apron, and go down on her knees, instanter, to rake the ashes out from the stove.
"This fire's pretty near out," she remarked. "If you want to eat at twelve—you do, don't you?—you've got to get your potatoes over pretty soon, and this fire'll need an hour to get up. Your wood's almost all; hadn't you ought to git some?"
"Almost all what?" asked Bob. "Isn't it right; anything wrong with it?"
"It's almost all," repeated Rose firmly. "All—don't you know what that is? How many sticks do you see there? Isn't it almost all? Nothin' wrong with the wood if they was more of it. Say, there hain't nothin' wrong with the boy, is they? He looks so sorter dumb at a body yet!"
"He didn't quite understand," said Mrs. Scollard gently, as Bob turned away to conceal the broad grin spreading over his face as he caught their new acquisition's meaning, and Happie bolted from the room.
Peculiarities of dialect did not affect the relish of the dinner which this hardy Rose served at thirteen minutes after twelve. Everything did taste so good to the hungry, weary and lonely Scollards! Margery and Happie renewed their duets of old Patty-Pan days as they dried Rosie's dishes, and their mother sat down to write Miss Bradbury of her coming, and to tell her that she might return at once to the bosom of a greatly cheered family, for the maid they wanted had found them, and search for her on their side was no longer necessary.
The storm cleared away in the night, and the glorious sunrise of the morning ushered in the spring. With it came soft brooding days in which the grass and leaves wakened to life, the birds dropped down from the warm sky in daily increasing kinds and numbers, and the flowers of early May lifted up their delicate little faces. Polly and Penny came home daily with wilting hepatica and anemones and violets in their warm little hands, while the older children sought and found on their rambles the arbutus whose sweetness the winds bore into the chambers of the Ark, past the dainty new curtains.
Rosie proved a comfort in spite of angularity of form and peculiarities of speech. She was such a balm to perturbed minds and weary muscles that the children privately referred to her as "the Dove," for her coming had been the harbinger of peace to the Ark. She evidently regarded the entire family as helpless infants, needing her unceasing care and vigilance, and she gave them no less than she deemed they needed, piloting them through the waters of inexperience.
Miss Bradbury wrote that she was coming back. Margery and Happie speculated on the effect of Rosie and her employer on each other, but Happie felt sure that they would get on together, for each was in her way a character, and their sterling honesty was of much the same pattern.
Aunt Keren was going to bring them something that they would enjoy, "a species of toy," so she wrote, yet something that she hoped to make useful. They must get Jake to bring his three-seated wagon to the station if the young Scollards came to meet her, as she hoped they would.
They did, or at least Margery, Happie and Bob did, consumed with curiosity as to what they should find encumbering Miss Bradbury.
When she stepped briskly off the car on the steps which the grade of the track at Crestville compelled the porter to place for passengers, the Scollards saw her encumbrance, and hailed it with a shout. There, dismounting behind Miss Keren-happuch, so thoroughly laden that there seemed no question that lady was already making him useful, his cheerful face one mass of smiles, came Ralph Gordon!
Happie and Bob dashed at him regardless of a man with a fishing-pole, come up for trout, and collided violently with the combination. The brief mishap, though it left the traveler furious, did not dampen Happie's ardor. She shook both Ralph's hands so hard, and exclaimed: "Well, I never did!" so emphatically, and so many times, that there was no doubt of her pleasure at seeing her former neighbor. Bob slapped him on the back with such abandon that Ralph swallowed whole the durable black licorice drop with which he had been beguiling the last moments of the journey, and choked over it so violently that he had no breath to reply to the questions his friends hurled at him in rapid succession.
"I thought that you might like a guest, a crumb from your Patty-Pans, so to speak," said Miss Bradbury, surveying the effect of her surprise with much satisfaction. "Ralph has had a cold, and has been working too hard," she explained. "I need a boy to help Bob, so I took this one. I shall expect you to keep him hard at work, allowing no time for talk or play. How's your Charlotte-mother?"
"Better for your return, Aunt Keren," said Margery sweetly, but truthfully.
"What about Snigs?" asked Happie.
"At home with his mother," returned Aunt Keren. "But he will come up in the summer, by August, if not before."
"Is Ralph——" Happie began, but stopped herself before she had framed a question that might have been awkward to answer.
Miss Keren-happuch finished it for her. "Going to stay?" she said. "Yes, he is, or at least until something happens to call him home. Mrs. Gordon yielded to my arguments, and consented to lending him to us. I told her we needed him, especially Bob. So I captured him. Curious that I went to get a girl, and brought home a boy, an altogether unforeseen boy."
Jake Shale drove slowly up the hill. The young people talked incessantly, and all together. Miss Bradbury listened in a pleased silence that betrayed itself in her eyes, for her lips were unbending. She saw that already the effect of her transplanting the Scollards showed; they were blossoming out like the season under the warmth of freedom from anxiety.
Miss Bradbury found to her surprise that she herself was glad to get home, and thought of her coming in those terms. Down in the bottom of her staunch old heart, the good woman had not looked forward to a summer in the Ark with less than dread.
The children took Ralph out at once to display to him all the interesting points of Miss Bradbury's estate, leaving its owner to their mother, and to form the acquaintance of Rose Gruber, "the Dove," whose olive branch was waxing greener in the eyes of all the "Archeologists," as Bob called the inmates of the Ark. Though Happie said that she thought they "were more like Architects, for the dictionary said they made, built, planned, contrived, and that was a full description of the Scollards."
"The creek is high," Rosie called after Bob and Happie, as they followed Margery and Ralph out the side door.
"We are going over to it on our way back," Happie answered over her shoulder. "It does seem to me a pity to call a beautiful trout brook 'a crick,' just as if it were a sort of rheumatism! Brooks sound like lovely things, but cricks!" She ended her supplementary remarks to her companions with a tiny shudder.
"Books are in running brooks; is that why you like them?" suggested Ralph. "Or is it because they chatter, chatter as they flow—fellow feeling, you know?" He glanced slyly at Happie. "Creeks ought to chatter even more than brooks, being an American variety."
There was an old grist mill half a mile away from the Ark, turned, when it did turn, by a beautiful stream, a trout brook made up of many mountain springs, rising far up in the hills, and rushing through Madison County to the river, which should bear them on to the sea. Clear and brown were the waters of this brook, its bottom paved with stones, its banks, rising steep on the one side, and gently sloping on the other, grown with ferns, luxuriant with rhododendrons, and surmounted with pines, spruce and giant maples. It was an enchanted region to the Scollards, city bred, and "Patty-Pan" set hitherto. They were delighted to take Ralph to the brook and show him that if the Ark were shabby, the country was perfect—they discovered a strong sense of proud proprietorship in their breasts as they introduced Ralph to their haunts, and it dawned upon them that they must be beginning to feel at home.
The brook was indeed high that day; the falls over the mill-dam were yellow from the upstirring of recent rains, boiling and seething over the logs creditably to their exhibitors, and the foam-flecked waters ran swiftly down, under the bridge that crossed the road to their goal.
"Well, do you raise mermaids?" asked Ralph, pointing out into the middle of the stream. Then before the others could speak, his face and voice changed, and he cried out: "Good gracious, it's Penny!"
It was Penny, seated on a log which for the moment had lodged midstream, held by a rock which could not hold it long. In her arms the child held something yellow; Jeunesse Dorée, Happie saw at once. She looked wet, her soft hair hung heavy around her pale little face, but she held up her head valiantly, and clasped the kitten safe and dry to her breast.
"Happie, oh, Happie!" she cried, as she saw the group on the bank, and held out a hand appealingly. It nearly cost her balance; she shook on her perilous seat, and Margery hid her face, while Happie caught her breath.
Then she raised her voice and called: "Hold on, hold on tight, darling. Bob's coming!" As she spoke the log swung loose, and floated a few feet farther down the stream. Bob dashed out into the water, and Ralph followed him. The brook was so high, the motion of the water so swift that there was danger for one alone, should he lose his footing, and Bob could not swim.
Steadying each other, the two boys waded out, keeping upright with difficulty, and watching the rigid little figure towards which they were struggling, fearing every moment that it would be jarred from its perch.
The rocks were slippery under their feet, the water rose well above their knees, logs and debris came against them, the log drifted ahead of them, always a little further out of reach. Suddenly it struck against the support of the bridge, and Penny's head disappeared under the water.
It was Ralph, who, letting go of Bob's shoulder, threw himself downward towards the spot where the child had disappeared. As he did so, he heard the cry of anguish from the girls on the bank. He remembered, with a prayer in his heart, that the little creature would drift far more swiftly than the heavy log had done.
But in an instant she rose further down the stream, and Ralph struggled to his feet and threw himself towards her, instinctively realizing that he could reach her quicker by falling in her direction than by striving to walk or to swim in that seething water. Little Penny's devotion to her kitten was meeting its reward; clasping it tight to her breast, she could not throw up her arms, and her light body floated long enough for Ralph to seize it.
He pulled her towards him by her pink skirt, and Bob, seeing the rescue, darted to his aid, lost his footing, fell headlong into the water, but reached his friend nevertheless, and the two boys, with Penny and Dorée, clambered up under the bridge none the worse for their experience.
The terror-stricken girls ran, slipping and stumbling over rocks and roots, to join them, and nearly dismembered Penny in the effort to hug her simultaneously.
"We mustn't let mother see her like this; it would shock her too much even to think of the danger now it's over," said Margery. "We will take her to the barn and get Rosie to come there with water for a hot bath, and we'll put dry clothes on the darling, and mother shall not know of this till we are sure Penny's no worse for the scare. What were you doing, Pennypet? How did you get on that dreadful log, out in the middle of the brook?"
"I sat on it up by the dam," said Penny cheerfully—she was the least frightened of the excited group. "The log was up there when I began to sit on it, and Dorée was playing with me. He was playing he was a goldfish and I was a pink water lily—'cause I've got on my pinkie chamray, don't you see?" Penny indicated her best beloved pink chambray frock as she spoke, looking ruefully at its wet folds. "Then the log wented off—oh, Dorée and I played the goldfish had crawled up into the pink water lily, and we were having the most fun! That's 'cause I was holding him, don't you see? He had crawled up into the pink water lily, truly. But the log wented down the brook, and we didn't know it was going, but I wasn't much scared; I could hold Dorée, don't you see? And you came—I didn't know Ralphie had come to the Nark!" She reached over to pat Ralph's face. "I guess I could have sat on it ever so long—days 'n days!—only it bumped. I don't think Dorée's hurt." She peered anxiously at shivering Dorée, who was wrapped in her wet garments, making desperate efforts to get away and lick himself dry.
"I don't think he's at all hurt, you precious baby!" cried Happie. "Give me Dorée; I can keep him warmer than you can, because you're so wet. There! Now boys, hurry as fast as you can! You're both soaking, and I'm afraid Penny'll be sick, and I'm shaking with cold; I'm so nervous. Run!"
They ran, and by the time they had reached the barn, both the boys were warmed up. Rosie came out and rubbed Penny into a glow, put her into dry garments, and sent her forth, apparently as good as new.
Margery and Happie told the story of their adventure to Aunt Keren, but not to their mother, who was not yet strong enough to be startled.
Miss Bradbury listened to it without a comment, but when it was finished, she laid a hand caressingly on Ralph's arm. "I said I needed a boy! But I didn't know I needed a coast guard," she remarked. "You have begun your career in the Ark appropriately, Ralph; pulling in people from the flood!"
"Happie is beginning to be indeed happy, and without effort," said Miss Bradbury in high satisfaction as she watched her pretty namesake blossoming into increasing brightness every day. It was quite true that Happie was beginning to be happy without effort. The first symptom of her growing reconciliation with her new home was that the lively correspondence with the friends whom she had left behind was abating; she found the days too short for the delights that the farm had to offer her, and she had less and less time for letter writing.
Happie had found a new interest in life besides the many interests of her first country spring-time, and her growing intimacy with the wild creatures,—an interest not unlike the latter, but far more absorbing. And this is how it began.
One day she was walking alone down the roadside. The sun lay on her head as warm as if it were June, and the dust rose under her feet. Out of the tangled growth of the wayside came frequently the fluttering of wings, or a squirrel in vociferous haste, whisking his tail and scolding her.
She came up at last to the furthest boundary of the Ark farm, far down on the margin of the brook, and to the house nearest to the Ark. It interested her, because she had heard that in it lived a girl of her own age, together with two women who had the reputation of being decidedly cross, and of leading this young girl a hard life. They were her cousins, without whose dubious shelter the girl would have been homeless.
As Happie came up she caught a glimpse of a brownish sunbonnet, and paused to peer at her unknown neighbor, herself hidden by a friendly chestnut tree. She saw a pair of shoulders, unmistakably youthful, covered by a faded but scrupulously clean gingham, and a plump brown hand skilfully wielding a paint brush with which it was renewing the storm-beaten red paint on the posts which upheld the wire fence forming the farm boundary.
The girl stopped her work, and, with an upward movement of her arm, threw off her sunbonnet with the back of her left hand, and drew her arm across her warm brow. She had dark brown eyes, darker hair, and her skin was as brown as a berry, but beautifully clear, and her cheeks wore a flush as red as the tint of her red lips. She was so pretty that Happie caught her breath with the pleasure almost all girls feel in another girl's beauty, no matter what sarcasms are pronounced by boys to the contrary. There was a warmth, a charm about this girl that warm-hearted Happie was quick to feel, and with it a look of patience that went to her heart.
"She needs a friend," thought Happie, and went forward without a doubt in her mind that she could fill the want, not because she was conceited, but because her motives were too pure, and her impulse too kindly to allow a doubt of her reception.
"I think you must be Gretta Engel," she said, her sunny face wreathed in smiles, as she came up to the painter.
The girl started violently, and blushed to the dark hair lying in damp rings on her forehead. She quickly pulled her brown sunbonnet into place, and stared at Happie without speaking, like a frightened rabbit cowering beside the fence.
"I'm Happie Scollard, and I live—I'm living this summer—on the next farm, the one that used to be Bittenbenders'," Happie continued. "I've been anxious to know you; we're so near the same age, and such close neighbors."
She paused for the reply which did not come, and then, for lack of it, took up the conversation again.
"It's lovely here; those mountains are glorious. I was so lonely and homesick at first I did not know how to bear it, but I'm getting happier every day. It's a beautiful place, Crestville, isn't it?"
"Yes, it is," returned Gretta.
"Have you always lived here?" asked Happie.
"Yes, I have," replied Gretta.
"And I used to live in a flat in New York; you can't imagine what a change this is!" said Happie cheerfully.
"I guess," said Gretta, looking at the tip of her brush as if hoping it might help her.
"Don't you get lonely here? I do, though there are so many of us," persisted Happie.
"Oh, I don't know; I don't get much time," said Gretta desperately, looking about as if meditating flight from this determined girl with whom she had not the slightest desire to make friends, and whose accent and little air of being accustomed to another world than that of the country girl embarrassed and annoyed her.
To her dismay, Happie seated herself on the grass at her side. "I don't believe there's any risk in sitting on the grass, if it is only May," she said. "It's as warm as June, and it must be dry. I think you need a friend, Gretta, and I want you to look at me hard and see if you don't think I could be she. The girls in New York rather liked me."
She thrust her head forward, inviting inspection as she applied for the position, and Gretta looked into the laughing eyes, and into the sweet, dimpling face bent towards her. Her own dark eyes lighted with pleasure in what she saw, and in spite of her shyness, she laughed a little.
"You don't want me for a friend; I'm different," she said.
"You look nice," announced Happie emphatically, "and I'd like to have you try me. If you mean that I've lived in the city, and so had more chance than you to get at books, besides having a clever and learned duck of a mother to teach me, while you have been all your life motherless, and far from libraries and good schools, besides being as busy as a bee, I think that's more to your credit than mine. If we liked each other, I could give you what I got out of books, and you could teach me how to be useful—wouldn't that be a good bargain for us both?"
Gretchen Engel turned to Happie with full appreciation of the kindly tact that so delicately, yet firmly grappled with her unspoken sensitiveness, and put on a level with herself the sweet girl, whose advantages had been many, while hers had been none at all. Her eyes filled with tears; she had a nature that was profoundly loving, and she was starving for kindness. Something had set her apart from the other girls who gathered with her through the winter in the little schoolhouse, and she was scolded all day long for doing her patient best in her meagre and reluctant home. Happie had guessed right that she was desperately lonely; she had not begun to conjecture how lonely, nor how much despair was mingling in that loneliness, though Gretta was but a girl of fourteen. No one could have needed nor wanted a friend more than pretty Gretta.
Seeing the sincerity that shone upon her from Happie's face, feeling her lovableness as she felt the warmth of the May sunshine, Gretta succumbed to her charm, forgetting to be shy.
"You're good," she said decidedly. "I'd like to be friends with you, if you could stand me, but I don't know when we'd ever get to see each other."
Happie gave a little hitch to her chin that meant determination.
"You must be outdoors a good deal to get that beautiful brown tint of yours; it will be queer if we can't get together. I never saw a pair of girls yet that couldn't outwit a pair of old cousins if they set out to do it," she said. "They are your cousins with whom you live, aren't they? Rosie Gruber is living with us, and she told me about you."
"I guess it didn't lose much in telling," said Gretta flushing. "I hate to have folks pitying me, and saying what hard times I have. Not but what it's true, though!" she added in a burst of self-pity and of confidence in the sympathy which she read in Happie's face. "I wouldn't care if I did work all the time, though girls that have mothers get a little time to themselves, even when they're poor. But no matter what I do, it's the wrong thing, and I get so sick of it that I 'most give up. Yes, they're my cousins that I live with, and they grudge me a living, though I earn one hard. I don't feel to owe them one thing; I guess they'd have put me on the township, only they'd have had that much bigger taxes, so they kept me. When I'm a year older I'm going off to work for strangers. I believe I'd have asked your mother to have took me, only I heard them telling you had nice things, and had lived in New York, and I thought I wouldn't do for you."
"You poor Gretta!" exclaimed Happie patting the brown hand nearer to her. "I don't see how you live! Here am I loved to death, the loveliest mother a girl ever had, the best brother in all the world—Bob's a perfect trump!—and Margery's so pretty and sweet you couldn't help loving her—she's seventeen, and just bursting into young ladyhood. And Laura, well, Laura's all right, of course, and Polly's the most dependable, good little creature, and Penny—Penelope, the baby—is the dearest little four-year-old you ever saw. To think I have all these, and you have no one! It doesn't seem fair!"
"Yes, and you can go to school yet!" cried Gretta with a bitterness that she had not shown before in speaking of her cousins. "They won't let me go much, and we don't have good schools here anyway. That's why I hate to see folks; I don't know anything, and they'll laugh at my way of talking."
"Mercy, Gretta, that's nothing!" cried Happie energetically. "My mother says if a person has brains, nothing can crush them; they'll prove themselves in spite of obstacles, and if they haven't, no amount of schooling can give them. Now that we're friends—for we are friends and that's settled—I can help you lots, so easily that neither you nor I will know it's done. You can speak just as well as any other girl, if you won't mind a hint now and then, and I have loads of books to lend you. And you must teach me practical things, milking—Aunt Keren's going to get two cows—and churning and everything I don't know. Isn't that a large order to fill? Why, I begin to see why I came here, over and above mother's health!" Happie had grown brighter-eyed and more enthusiastic as she talked. "Mother says each soul has certain tasks set for it that no other soul can do, and that we are led along to places where our work is ready for us, and that we must be careful not to miss it when it comes to us. Maybe it was for your sake as well as mama's that dear Aunt Keren brought us all up here to her farm, which she had never seen, to spend this summer! Maybe it was because you were so lonely and needed friends so much. You've such a strong, beautiful face that I'm sure you are too fine not to get some slight chance to be happy and clever."
Gretta looked keenly and quickly at Happie, suspecting mockery in these compliments, for she mistrusted praise, having been carefully trained to consider herself far below meriting it. She saw nothing but perfect truth in the brown eyes gazing into her darker ones, eyes alight with overflowing love and the joy of the thought that their owner might do good to another who lacked so much.