All the repressed riches of the country girl's nature leaped up to meet the good offered her, caring less for the material good than for the treasure of affection, inestimable to one to whom it had thus far been denied, and who had more than most the capacity for receiving and returning it.
Gretta struggled for adequate expression, and missed it; she could not have voiced or understood what she felt at that moment.
"You're good," was what she said.
Happie understood. "So are you," she retorted. "And very lovable. That makes us both good, so we will have good times. Now go on painting, or you may get scolded. If I had a brush I think I could help you."
Gretta shook her head. "I'm used to scolding," she said. "And you'd get red paint all over your dress."
She dipped her brush in the pot, carefully scraped it on the edge, and made a vigorous stroke down the side of the post next in order.
"Can't you ever come to see me?" Happie asked as she watched her. "You know our place, the Bittenbender farm?"
Gretta nodded. "Mrs. Bittenbender was my grandmother," she said.
"Not really!" cried Happie. "Why, I've been wondering about that family, and you must know all about them! It seemed so queer for them to go off and leave their furniture in the house. Of course there isn't——" Happie stopped herself on the point of saying that there was not much furniture, fearing that Gretta might mind it, and said instead: "There isn't any reason why they shouldn't leave their furniture, only most people take it with them, or sell it when they move. And you are a Bittenbender!"
"No, indeed, I'm not!" cried Gretta. "My grandmother married Mr. Bittenbender for her second husband. She was my father's mother, and so her name was Engel before that. I guess her second husband mortgaged the place, furniture and all, so he had to leave the furniture. But he didn't have to give up the place if he hadn't wanted to. He had plenty money; he was an old miser. That's why he liked better to keep his money than to pay your aunt, so he gave up the place. My grandmother died when I was a baby. I guess that old Isaac Bittenbender wasn't too honest. My grandmother was a good woman, and they say she had a hard life after she married him. He got too old to farm towards the last, so he left your aunt take the place."
"He let my aunt take the place," suggested Happie, fulfilling her promise of hint-giving for Gretta's improvement. "They left an old, worn-off horsehair trunk in the attic. Some day when you can, you must come and open it. You are the nearest to being a representative of the family whom we have found here, and I'm dying to investigate that trunk."
"If there'd been anything in it worth seeing he wouldn't have let—have left it," said Gretta. "They say he was the closest man in Madison County. I heard he made my grandmother——" She stopped suddenly to listen. "I hear Eunice calling; she's the crossest of my cousins, if there's a difference. I've got to go."
She arose, and Happie was surprised to discover that her height overtopped her own by a full head, for she had thought of her as she sat as being rather short.
Gretta moved with a grace and dignity that also surprised her; there was a freedom in every motion, and a splendor of poise won from her intimacy with the mountains, which made Happie wish that she could see her clad in beautiful garments. But the faded reddish gingham gown, and the brown sunbonnet were far from unbecoming to the girl. Happie said to herself: "Why, I thought she was pretty, but I believe she is a beauty!"
Gretta stood for a moment dipping her brush uncertainly in and out of her paint pot, not knowing how to take her leave, once more self-conscious and embarrassed.
Happie solved the difficulty. "You won't mind if this Eunice does scold now, will you, Gretta? And you won't feel lonely? Because we are going to be friends forever and forever, amen." And she put her arm around the faded gingham-clad waist.
Gretta drew off and looked at her. "Oh, I guess you don't want me!" she said, But there was a ring of happiness in her voice, as if she were sure of contradiction.
"You'll see!" laughed Happie, and kissed her new friend. "At any rate I think I want you. Good-bye till next time. Can you come to see me?"
"I don't know; I shall be painting this fence for the next few days," said Gretta suggestively, as she returned the kiss.
"All right," cried Happie triumphantly, and ran away waving her hand to Gretta, who walked backwards looking after her, leaving a slight trail of paint in her wake which threatened trouble for her when it should be discovered.
"I have made friends with Gretta Engel," she announced, coming into the dining-room where her family were busied with helping or waiting for the dinner which Rosie Gruber was "dishing up."
"She's so handsome I couldn't tell you how handsome she is, and there is something about her that draws you to her like a magnet! I'm going to lend her books and give her pleasure, and she's going to do lots for me. I shouldn't wonder if we came here for her sake—partly, at least."
Rosie surveyed Happie with high approval; of all the young Scollards, Happie was her favorite.
"Gretta's the prettiest and brightest girl in Crestville," she declared. "But she's awful shy. If you've got her to talk to you, you've done wonders. And if you make her friends with you, you'll be doin' the best thing you've ever done in your short life. If you was to know the whole of Gretta's story, you'd think she'd had pretty hard luck. I'm glad you hain't one of the sort of folks that can't see through a faded dress, nor yet under a sunbonnet, Happie."
"If she's got Happie to take her up, she's had one piece of good luck," said Bob, who never hesitated to show publicly his appreciation of his sister. "Happie makes every one else happy—that's a well-wearing, well-worn family joke, Ralph—and she's not the sort to let them slip back again into unhappiness because she gets tired of her bargain, are you, Hapsie? Are you going to adopt your beauty?"
Margery, Laura and their mother laughed. The family had never exhausted the fun of the story of Happie's adoption of a colored girl of twelve when the young woman herself was at the suitable age of four. She had insisted on bringing big Cora Jackson home with her, and on opening her bank to take out her pennies to buy ice cream for her sustenance. She had been much grieved when her protégée had been found to have decamped, taking with her her little protector's gold shoulder pins, as well as Margery's new parasol.
Happie now joined in the laugh, but gave her decided little hitch of the chin.
"And if I did," she said, "it wouldn't be a bad plan. At least I wouldn't scold her all day and every day, as her cross old cousins do. And there's a great difference between the Cora Jackson of my childhood, and this pretty Gretta of my old age! You wait till you see her, Bob! She's far prettier than Allie Herford." Which was a home thrust, for Bob considered Allie Herford the prettiest girl of his acquaintance.
Ralph looked up quizzically. "Don't you mind 'em, Happie," he said. "I believe in your four-leaf-clover-of-the-fields, and that you will find her good luck. Besides, you must not let your young mind get embittered by these cynics. 'It's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.' So it's better to invest your trust, even though your bubbles—bust. Pardon the inelegance, Laura; I did not realize that 'burst' only rhymed with 'trust' when it was 'bust,' until I was too far embarked on my poem to tack—to carry on my metaphor with an unmixedness that I hope you appreciate. Never mind if your Gretta deceives you!"
"I never knew any other boy so imbued with the poets!" said Margery in mock admiration of Ralph's outburst.
But Rosie, flying in and out with steaming dishes, was impressed only by the matter, not the manner of his remarks.
"Don't you talk silly, Ralph Gordon," she said spiritedly. "Gretta Engel never will deceive nobody. She will do Happie good too, and she's made a good bargain yet. Your meat's fried most too much. Set up and eat awhile before it gits cold."
"Do you know we love the Ark?" said Happie to Margery, as they opened the back door to let in all the glorious outdoors June time, having at last succeeded in their ambition to get down one morning ahead of Rosie.
June had come softly, swiftly over the mountains, bringing all her wealth of beauty to the exiles from the lesser treasures of the city, a beautiful surprise in every hour. Robins were nesting in the gnarled apple trees; Happie looked into their homes every morning when she arose, sharing the happiness of the brooding mothers whose secrets she jealously guarded.
Grass and clover were beginning to blossom to be ready for harvesting on the fourth of July, cherries were reddening in the long sunshine of the perfect days, and nature generously seconded the efforts of the newcomers and of the carpenters in repairing and concealing damages to the neglected buildings of the new-old home.
Ralph and Bob were busy building chicken houses and tinkering on sheds. Miss Bradbury, in the innocence of her heart, had decided that it would be good to keep chickens, and they had been added to the stock of the Ark.
Rosie was most competent, slightly cross as quick workers are apt to be, but she took the direction and care of the household upon her shoulders, and Miss Bradbury was glad to overlook a snappishness which was, as Margery said, "merely the snapping of the crust; not one bit from her heart." It was worth while for the sake of being steered through the waters of her inexperience of farm life. They all felt that Penny was justified in her gravely uttered opinion that Rosie was "a lovely lady."
The family had discovered that Rosie had had her share of sorrow, represented by five child graves in the Methodist churchyard, and a living husband who occasionally called upon her. This Mahlon was working on a farm seven miles distant. Bob asked if he were employed as a scarecrow, for a more limp, lazy, incompetent creature was never seen outside The Wizard of Oz. He had a trick of standing on one leg, and swinging the other in unison with the arm on the same side which was an inexhaustible amusement to the children when he came to the farm. He talked in a high, monotonous whine which gave his long thin face the effect of a penny whistle emitting the sound—altogether a sharper contrast to energetic Rosie that he was would have been hard to imagine. The Scollards gathered that her struggle for existence when her children were coming, and quickly going to fill those little graves, had been harder than she said. They were glad for her sake, as well as their own, that she had closed her forlorn house, sent off her Mahlon to work in Zurich according to his ability, and had come to work for them according to her own, very different ability.
Competent as Rosie was, however, she was but one woman, and there was enough left for the girls to do to help her. Happie, on the whole and allowing for those days when the grasshopper is a burden, reveled in her tasks and sang about them all day long, getting brown and plump and prettier for her activity. Margery never reached the point of enjoying her share of the labor, which made it the more creditable that she quietly performed it each day, never complaining, still less shirking, for Margery had that fine conscientiousness which asks: "Should I?" and never: "Would I?"
Rosie came down in less than ten minutes after the girls, and altered the draughts of the stove instantly. Rosie always changed slightly anything done by another, being imbued with doubts of others' competency.
"What got you up so early?" she asked. "My alarm went off, but I laid a minute plannin' my work for the day."
"I couldn't sleep, I was so excited about that horse," said Happie. "I suppose I woke Margery, though I thought I was trying not to waken her. Just as soon as breakfast is over, and the work done I want to go over to tell Gretta about him."
Happie had gone on since she had scraped acquaintance with Gretta, cultivating her all down the fence line as she painted. When the posts were all done, and the double line of wire connecting gorgeous fresh red posts, Happie had completely exorcized Gretta's shyness. She had even followed her up when duty called her to decorate the posts nearest to the house, and had braved the forbidding glare of Gretta's cousins' eyes with such beaming unconsciousness of the possibility of any one's objecting to Gretta's having a friend that she had escaped being ordered away, as Gretta had prophesied that she would be.
"I'd hate to have them say anything to you," Gretta had said anxiously.
And Happie had laughed with a pat on Gretta's arm that was meant to be reassuring, but which sent a great blob of red paint on the flagstone walk.
"They won't say anything to me, Gretta," she had declared. "No one ever does. I'll smile so sweetly, they can't reflect back a frown."
"I'll have to get that off with coal oil," Gretta remarked, regarding the spot on the walk ruefully. "You don't know my cousins; they're not very good looking-glasses. They frown anyway, and they don't reflect you, no matter how you smile."
It was true that they did not reflect Happie's smiles, but neither did they frown. They regarded her with icy impassivity, glad in their hearts of a chance to see near by "one of the new folks" about whom they felt so much curiosity, and reserving their right to prevent Gretta's enjoying her when they saw fit.
Gretta was blossoming out under the new happiness and companionship; she was full of a quiet humor that delighted Happie, and she imitated her little niceties of speech with a quickness that rarely needed a second hint. But Happie had not thus far been able to overcome her shyness sufficiently to get her to meet any of the other inmates of the Ark, whom Gretta avoided under one head, as "the rest." She had begun to despair of ever making her one of their jolly little band when Don Dolor Bonaparte came to her aid.
"What is it to-day, Happie?" asked Miss Bradbury, noting the symptoms of haste in her namesake's breakfast preparations.
"I am going to trap Gretta with Don Dolor, Aunt Keren," laughed Happie. "I want to run over and tell her there is a horse coming, and I hope I shall be able to get her here to see him. You know Gretta is more than fond of horses, and they say she knows more about them than half the men around here; she can drive anything. I think I can coax her to the Ark by pretending we want her opinion of Don Dolor Bonaparte."
"I'm afraid, judging from Mr. Hewett's letter, that her opinion of him won't be high, and I'm certain she wouldn't have to be a horsewoman to drive him," said Miss Bradbury. "But by all means bait your trap with Don Dolor, and troll your woodland maiden to the Ark. I am curious to see the girl that attracts you so strongly."
"I'm sure we shall love her if Happie does," added Mrs. Scollard. Her cheeks were gaining a June tint. Smiling back at her, Happie thought that it was not strange that they were all learning to love the farm that was restoring her to them.
Happie hurried through her morning tasks and raced over to see Gretta. She felt quite sure that at that hour she should find her carrying water to the young lettuce plants which her cousins, Eunice and Reba Neumann, were raising for the hotels five miles distant on the mountains, which in July and August would be thronged with guests.
"Gretta, Gretta!" cried Happie waving her hands as she leaped the garden fence. "Gretta, Aunt Keren has had a letter from Mr. Hewett, her agent in New York, and he has sent up a horse. Bob and Ralph are going down to the station this minute to bring him up. I think he must be pretty bad, because this Mr. Hewett wrote that we were not to judge him by our first impressions. He says he bought him for next to nothing, but if he survives the journey, and we feed him well, we'll see that it was not only a charity but an investment to buy him. He says he has blood, though at first sight we shall think he has only bones. He says his name is Don Dolor Bonaparte—only fancy! You've got to come back with me and receive him. We don't any of us know anything about horses, except Rosie, and you know a lot. So you come back with me, and tell me what you think of poor Don Dolor." And artful Happie smiled alluringly.
Gretta looked up with a laugh in her dark eyes. "Maybe I don't see what you're after!" she said. "You want to get me started coming; I know! Truly, Happie, I don't like to see the rest. I don't know them, and if I did get over being afraid of them, still, I would never get time to visit. You bring the horse down the road and I'll see him there."
Happie folded her hands prayerfully. "Please, please, Gretta, come home with me and see the new old horse! Look at me; don't I look pleading? Have you the heart to say me nay, when I beg you with my paws folded, like a nice little dog, and say please so prettily?"
Gretta laughed. "You make folks do whatever you want," she said. "I'll come if you'll wait till I get these plants watered, and change my dress."
"I'll wait till the lettuce dresses itself for a salad and you for a visit, if you like!" cried Happie triumphantly. "Bob and Ralph have only just started for the station, and they won't get back for nearly two hours anyway; Jake Shale took them down, and you know that is slower than walking. So we've plenty of time."
"I've got to tell Eunice and Reba," said Gretta. "They may take a notion to make me stay home."
"I believe you hope that they will!" cried Happie reproachfully. "See here, Gretta, you'll find that the Scollards neither bark nor bite, because it is their nature to—not! They are the nicest things, every one of them! You'll like Margery better than me; that's my one fear in bringing you together."
"I guess not," said Gretta looking up at Happie from her knees as she weeded the lettuce with eyes full of dog-like devotion and admiration.
"You let me ask your cousins to let you go with me; they won't refuse you to me, for shame's sake. You've finished all your work for the morning," said Happie.
"Work's never finished," corrected Gretta out of her deeper experience. "And we haven't had dinner."
"Maybe it won't take long to look over Don Dolor; he may not be a large horse," suggested Happie. "Come along, Gretta."
Gretta ushered Happie into the fleckless kitchen. There were two gaunt women, looking past sixty, though neither could have been much past forty. One was stirring milk in a stone crock on the back of the stove, which was just thickening into perfection for schmier-kase, while her sister was tying on her sunbonnet with resolute jerks of the strings, and hunting for the basket to bring in more wood. Her movements were accompanied by a running fire of scolding about Gretta, to whose account she set down the absence of the basket, which all the time hung peacefully on a nail in full sight above the table.
"What's wrong with you?" demanded Reba, lifting the crock from the stove and setting it down with the emphasis of its weight. "It's easier using the wheelbarrow anyhow, but if you want the basket, there 'tis. I guess you're getting near-sighted."
"I guess!" retorted Eunice derisively. "Why didn't you hang that there basket alongside the stove? Here I've been a-huntin' and a-huntin' for it," she added, catching sight of Gretta, and quite ignoring Happie.
"Good-morning, Miss Neumann," said that young lady, somewhat daunted by the difficulties of this beginning, but holding to her courage. "My aunt has a horse just arrived, and I'd like to have Gretta come over to see him, please. You'll let her go, for a little while, won't you?"
"A horse? From the city? What good does she expect a city horse to be on these mountains?" demanded Eunice. "She'd better bought one up here, and saved the express on him yet!"
"Oh, I think this horse was sent into the country for his health," laughed Happie. "You will let Gretta come over, won't you?"
"How do you make out with Rosie Gruber?" inquired Eunice. "She's got such a temper, folks say, Mahlon can't stay home. She hain't clean; not what we call clean."
"Why, Miss Neumann!" cried Happie, shocked into undiplomatic defense of Rosie. "She hasn't a bad temper; she's only a little, wee bit snappish, and as to Mahlon, if it wasn't for Rosie he wouldn't have a home to stay in—but of course you know that even better than I do! And she's the cleanest woman! She's made our tumble-down old house as clean as wax. Rosie's a treasure."
"That house you seem to think so poor of hadn't ought to be yours anyhow," said the agreeable Eunice. "Old Bittenbender hadn't any right to give it over to your folks. There's cheatin' somewheres, but we couldn't never prove nothin'. 'Twan't his to give; we're certain of that. It ought to belong to Gretta here, and if she had it she could rent it out, or maybe take a couple of summer boarders after a year, or a couple of years more, instead of bein' a cost to us who need all we kin make for ourselves! Gretta, you git off that there bonnet and git up the potatoes. What you standin' round fer? Hain't there always work to do, I'd like to know?"
Gretta did not answer. She hung up her sunbonnet with quiet obedience, and took the tin basin in which to fetch potatoes. She seemed to recognize at once the uselessness of further pleas for her visit.
But Happie, seeing the clouding of the dark eyes and the look of shame on the pretty face of her new friend, cried out: "Oh, Miss Neumann, Gretta wouldn't be gone long! Won't you please, please let her come home with me? She hasn't been once! Are—you are going to let her come, aren't you?"
"Well, I guess she hain't goin' visitin' before dinner!" said Eunice. "She'd better not go no time. I tell her she'll find out what she'll git, makin' friends with a city girl like you, that'll git tired of her 'soon's you've got used to her, and then where'll she be, with her head all filled up with foolish notions, and tryin' to talk fine, like you yet? I've got my eyes open; I see just what you're doin' with Gretta. She'd better stick to her own folks, that's what she'd better! She come into the world to work, and she's got to work all her life. You won't do her no good, makin' her discontented and then leavin' her. I've been warnin' her, but she's like all girls—thinks she knows more'n older folks! I'm glad I've got the chanct to tell you to your face you'd better leave Gretta stay where you found her. I bet you laugh at her now when you git home with the rest!"
Happie's eyes blazed. She took a step towards Eunice, drawing herself up to the woman's height in her righteous indignation. Gretta quailed, even while she rejoiced that this time Eunice had met one who did not fear her.
"Miss Neumann," said Happie, trying to speak quietly, remembering that this woman was much her elder, and the imprudence of angering her further, for Gretta's sake. "Miss Neumann, I can't allow you to accuse me of being double-faced. When I say I admire and like Gretta I mean it, and when I speak of her, I speak as I do to her. If I were so treacherous, so mean as to pretend to be her friend and then went home and laughed at her I should be severely punished; my mother would have no mercy on a hypocrite. But why should I laugh at Gretta? She is pretty, gentle, refined, good, and patient as I never could be. I like her very much, and she knows I do. I'm not going to drop her, and I won't forget her. I wish you would not try to teach her to mistrust me; it's not fair. And even if she did come into the world to work—I suppose she did, because everybody has to work, one way or another—she came into it for lots else, and I mean to help her find the rest. It almost seems as if you grudged her love and pleasure. Of course you don't, because you couldn't, but it almost seems so. Anyway you will please never speak of me again as you did just now, because I can't possibly be called double-faced."
Gretta's heart thrilled as she listened to her friend pouring out her words more rapidly than her cousins had ever heard any one speak, but clearly, and with a dignity that struck precisely the right note of outraged honor and of self-restraint.
Eunice turned away her eyes from the girl's glowing ones; she felt the force of Happie's justice and her own meanness.
"I don't see what you're going to do about it whatever I say, and I hain't goin' to leave no one tell me what to talk about," she muttered. "I don't care what Gretta does. We took her because we had to, and she hain't never been grateful to us. If she wants to hang around you I won't stop her, but she can't let her work undone. Gretta, when are you goin' down cellar after them potatoes?"
"Now, Eunice," said Gretta. There was a new note in her quiet voice, and she immediately turned to Happie. "I've got to help with dinner now, Happie, and I may be busy a while after that, but I'll come over this afternoon to your house."
Reba looked up quickly from the cheese which she was straining through a cloth. "Yes, you go, Gretta," she said, and Happie went away wondering.
She was not sufficiently versed in human nature to know that Gretta's sudden accession of decision had come from two things. First, she was emboldened by Happie's encounter with her cousin, but still more was she forgetting herself, her dread of visiting, in the desire to prove to her champion that she held to her faith in her unshaken, and that she wished with all her loyal heart to make up to Happie for her cousin's hatefulness. In her desire to show her confidence in her friend and her gratitude to her, at last the fear of that vague "rest" of the Scollards had been lost.
Happie reached home so excited by her adventure with Eunice that she did not rush out to see the new horse as she had planned doing. Instead she regaled her family with the story, almost forgetting to eat, she talked so fast.
"Well, dear; I hope you weren't impertinent, but from what you tell me I think you weren't," said her mother, when the long tale was finished. "For Gretta's sake as well as your own you were obliged to vindicate yourself from the charge of insincerity. And more years do not warrant imputations on another's honor."
Rosie Gruber, taking part as usual in the family councils, here interposed. "Of course she wasn't saucy; Happie's never saucy. The idea of telling her to her face she was two-faced yet! You send them Neumanns to me! I'll tell 'em how you're always talking about Gretta and planning to help her! Two-faced, you! That's a good hint you give her about grudging Gretta friends; you hit her there, and she knew it. There never was such a jealous-hearted woman as Eunice Neumann. She hates to see any one havin' a good time. When Reba was young she had a beau—Eunice never did; there wa'n't a man in the township would have darst to keep comp'ny with Eunice, but Reba had a beau. And if that woman—girl she was then, but just the same's now at heart—if she didn't hint round and fuss round till she got him to stop goin' with her sister, then my name isn't Rosie Heimgegen, Rosie Gruber now! Reba'd be different if she lived somewheres else. Eunice nags and nags till Reba gits to snappin' back—there hain't many things so ketchin' as snappin'. Eunice grudges Gretta her board and keep, though she earns it good. She's mad to think Gretta's happier this summer. There is folks like that, all sour and clabbered like schmier-case——My days! That puts me in mind! I went off and let that pot too far front on the fire! I wanted to hurry it a while, but I guess it's hurried too much." And good Rosie rushed out to the rescue of her schmier-case, to which she was trying to convert the family, hurried so fast that Jeunesse Dorée fled to the windowsill for safety, a puff of nervousness.
Miss Bradbury looked at her namesake sternly, but there was a belying twinkle in her eye. "What do you mean by embroiling me with my neighbors, Keren-happuch?" she demanded.
"If the horse is Don Dolor, you are Donna Quixote, Happie," added Ralph before Happie could reply to the inquiry of the head of the house.
"Oh, well, Aunt Keren, Happie thinks you might as well be embroiled with this Eunice, I suppose, because she is making Gretta's life a roast," said Bob coming to his sister's rescue. "I am curious to see this field-flower—she must be a daisy!"
"She is," laughed Happie. "My goodness, she's coming now! She must have hurried off right after her dinner! I was afraid her courage would fail her when the time came. Bob and Ralph, slip out to the barn and don't show yourselves until you come around with the horse—then there'll be something to talk about, and she won't be shy with you. Margery, you come out after me, soon, and speak to her without my introducing you—you know how. Smile at her and speak in your soft voice, and she'll never be frightened. I'll take Penny out with me; Gretta loves babies, and Polly is too little to mind, so she can do what she likes. And mama and Aunt Keren might slip out when we are in full swing with Don Dolor, and Gretta may not realize she's meeting you. I guess she won't be shy if we sort of leak out, and don't all face her at once. Oh, Laura! Well, I think you'd better follow me at first."
"And what am I to do?" asked Rosie, amused, yet pleased with the pains Happie was taking to launch Gretta smoothly on social waters.
"Oh, you can do whatever you please, and help us out. You understand her, and she knows you. You make us laugh, Rosie. Come on with Happie, Penny-tot."
"Cabbages and kings!" cried Bob. "It's worse than snaring a timid fawn, or catch a dicky-bird with salt! I hope she's worth the trouble." And he departed stableward with Ralph to carry out their part of Happie's programme.
When it was all over, and "the rest" had been met by easy and reassuring stages, Bob said that he believed Gretta was worth the trouble. Happie was satisfied with this concession; she expected no greater enthusiasm from Bob on the subject of a mere girl.
When Don Dolor was led out, Happie saw the force of his christening. Polly said, without intent to be funny, that "he was more like a clothes horse"; the framework of his anatomy was nearly as fully in evidence.
"Oh, the poor thing!" cried Happie, instantly loving him because of his unloveliness.
"My goodness, it's time he was sent into the country for his health!" cried Gretta, shocked into forgetfulness of her shyness. "But he isn't old, and he doesn't look sick; he's been starved and overworked. He'll come out all right."
This dictum was a great comfort, for Gretta was supposed to know more about horses than many of the Crestville men; she loved them, and had learned about them through that love.
"I don't think he ought to walk about," said Polly anxiously. "He looks as if he might go all to little bits. Can't you just rest him, Bob?"
"We're going to let you ride him up and down in your doll carriage, Polly," said Ralph.
"It isn't big enough," said serious Polly, and Gretta laughed as heartily as the others.
Gentle Mrs. Scollard's greeting left the girl timid and awkward, while Miss Keren-happuch she answered without hesitation, and with a laugh in her eyes, to Happie's surprise, who had looked for the reverse effects.
Then Don Dolor was led back to his sore-needed rest, and as Gretta said she must not stay this first time, Margery and Happie walked down the road with her.
All down the road Margery laughed at Gretta's funny sayings, while Happie looked as proud as a cat with a kitten.
"Come soon again, come often after tea," said Margery, as they paused at the Neumann gate for the prolonged parting of girlhood.
"I shall," said Gretta with a prompt decisiveness that delighted Happie. "After I get my work done, my cousins haven't any right to keep me home, and I'm coming if you'll leave—let me."
"We'd be only too glad," said Margery heartily. "We haven't any girls up here to run in; all our friends are in New York, so come up to keep us from getting lonely, Gretta."
Happie only squeezed Gretta's hand. She was delighted that Margery and her "treasure trove," as the boys called her, got on so well together, and bright visions of Gretta's future danced before the warm brown eyes which revealed to the world the love in Happie's generous heart.
A week later Miss Bradbury came down in the morning with the ravages of sleeplessness plainly visible on her face.
"I've heard noises all night," she said in reply to inquiries. "I don't know what they were, but I dislike them. Boys, I wish you would drive down to the store and buy that watchman's rattle we saw there, and stop at Peter Kuntz' and tell him I'll buy his dog."
"There wouldn't be much use in rattling, dear Miss Keren," laughed Mrs. Scollard. "Nobody could hear you."
"And don't you know you asked us to put those bean poles in the garden, and set the pea brush?" added Bob. "They really need doing, and we can't do that and go to the village too."
"Then Happie must get Gretta to drive down with her," said Miss Bradbury decidedly. "I haven't been free from nerves all my life to let them get the upper hand of me now without an effort to check them. I must have the rattle and the dog. Don Dolor is able to make the trip now."
He was. If any one doubted the effect of plenty of food and care, Don Dolor Bonaparte, could he have met the sceptic, would have converted him by the most eloquent of preaching—personal example. In that one week he had become another horse. He had put on flesh, he had begun to get glossy, he held up his head as hope awoke in his equine breast, and he showed unmistakable symptoms of returning to the beauty that had once been his. Bob was devoted to him; he had hard work to tear himself from him long enough to perform his tasks on the farm, which were many and irksome, and took a great deal of time.
When they had leisure, Bob and Ralph took their books into the orchard where they allowed the don to graze while they read, prostrate in the long grass. Poor Don Dolor appreciated the kindness to which he was not accustomed. Sometimes when Bob was deep in his plot, the don would come up and nose him caressingly as one who would say: "You can't imagine how different all this is, nor how I thank you!"
So he was entirely able to go to the village in pursuit of his mistress' rattle and dog, and Happie was only too glad of the chance to borrow Gretta and take the drive. She had found the drive up from the station almost too much for her on that April night when she had first taken it, but how pleasant it was now to go slowly along the shaded road, hearing the quail whistling in the fields, and the catbird warbling his June ecstasy!
"Somehow I feel as if I had never seen the country till this year," said Happie looking about her with ineffable content as she and Gretta wound carefully down the steep hill. "It's queer, because I used to go away every summer till the last two, but I feel as if something had awakened in me this year; it all seems different and lovelier."
"That's because you had a hard time before you came. It makes people see and feel to have a hard time—unless it's a hard enough time to dull them," said Gretta. "That's one reason, and the other is that you have a home here this year. I never was away from here, but I'm pretty sure no other place ever looks the way home does. You wouldn't see this road as you do if you didn't feel your home was at one end of it."
Happie turned in her seat to look at Gretta. She considered her clever, but she was perpetually surprised at the insight this girl betrayed, now that she dared reveal herself.
"I see that's true when you say it, Gretta," she cried. "But I don't believe I should have found it out for myself. How do you know things like that?"
"I've been alone 'most all the time," said Gretta. "That makes a body think; I always thought more than I talked. Then not having any real home of my own makes a difference. I always felt I'd love my own home, because I love Crestville so, even if I can't love Eunice's house much. I guess it's because I've had hard times myself that I know what hard times teaches people."
"Teach, dear, when there are more than one thing of which you are speaking," said Happie, with a pat of apology for the correction.
But Gretta did not mind being corrected. "Teach, then," she said. "But it seems queer to take off an s on one word, when you put it on the other. I'll never learn."
"You learn wonderfully; it doesn't matter much anyway," said Happie with a new perception of essentials of which she would not have been capable a year before. "But it does matter that you have hard times! Cheer up, pretty Gretta! I'm certain they won't last much longer."
"They're half over already since you came," said Gretta with her adoring look.
"You love this place," Happie resumed, acknowledging this remark with a squeeze, "and you'd like to live here all your days—you'd be perfectly happy if you owned a house like the Ark, for instance. Yet here am I wondering if I can stand living in it, for unless mother gets decidedly better, Aunt Keren says we may stay on in the Ark all winter, and of course we should have to. Isn't life queer and mixy? By the way, what did your Cousin Eunice mean that day when she made me so hopping, by saying you ought to own that house?"
"Nothing; just nonsense; Eunice is always saying things," said Gretta hastily. Which was so true that Happie accepted the answer without further thought.
They drew up at the little store, which was at once a miniature department store and the post-office. A rail ran along the upper side of the store for the convenience of customers whose horses would not stand without tying; here the girls fastened the don, who stood out quite beautiful in contrast to a dingy white horse on his right, a horse all speckled with black, as if some one had been doing spatterwork on him with an unsteady hand and too coarse a comb. On the don's left, to enhance his line lines, drooped Joel Lange's café au lait mule, and Happie suddenly felt proud of her well-built steed.
Happie took her mail and followed Gretta to the other side of the store. There were two letters for her mother, one for Margery and three for herself, besides Miss Bradbury's daily budget of letters and papers, and Ralph's equally reliable letter which came every day from his mother and Snigs.
It proved how far Happie had traveled on the road to contentment and interest in her new home that she no longer tore open her New York missives with trembling fingers and brimming eyes as she had done during her first six weeks of exile from her friends.
Gretta was buying blue and white checked gingham for aprons, thread, outing flannel of a despondent shade of gray to match Eunice's sample, stove blacking and a bread pan, bartering for a small portion of the cost of these, twenty-seven eggs which her cousins had confided to her care for this end.
Happie bought only darning cotton, but she invested in fig paste and sour balls, the most attractive candy that she found in the boxes ranged side by side in the show-case. They had red-lettered labels on their ends of such misleading character that it was evident that they were boxes remaining from bygone days, whose original contents had long been purchased by youthful Crestvillians.
"I can't get the brown calico Reba wanted; it's all," said Gretta, and then blushed at her relapse into the vernacular and added hastily: "I'm ready if you are."
"I'm ready," said Happie, wrenching herself from the contemplation of the portraits on a poster of some incredibly corpulent hens and pigs, professing to have been nourished by a powder which the poster advertised.
"Wait here and I'll bring the horse to the steps," said Gretta, going with indifference between Don Dolor, the café au lait mule and the spatterwork horse.
Happie jumped into the buggy, smiling with pleasure. There was something cozy about a trip to the village store, doing everything for oneself, and watching life at close range. She had completely forgotten the original errand on which she had come.
Don Dolor trotted along briskly, head up and his black flanks shining in a way that reflected credit on Bob's amateur grooming, for they shone enough to reflect anything else as well as credit.
"I'll read my letters if you don't mind, Gretta," said Happie. She had fallen into the habit of reading the girls' letters to this lonely girl at her side. Happie's friends belonged to the world into which her father and mother were born, a world of wealth and pleasure, and their letters gave Gretta insight into lives very different from her own, into which they brought new personal interests. She had grown to know Happie's friends through this introduction. Happie now read pages of merry-making at the seashore, whither Edith had gone early; of still gayer doings in New York, where Elsie Barker lingered, going to roof gardens and summer operas to her lively heart's content, and of the most delightful times of all which Eleanor Vernon was having traveling up the Hudson to Niagara, the St. Lawrence, Montreal and Quebec.
Happie drew a long breath as she laid down this last letter. "That's the trip I most want to take on this side the ocean," she said soberly.
Gretta looked at her anxiously. She was more than desirous that Happie should not miss her old friends, nor long for the pleasures of town, and her chief earthly hope just now was that Happie might become too attached to Crestville to be willing to go back.
"I don't see how you stand it," she said, with the deep design of hearing what Happie would reply. "Don't you wish that one of the fairies you were reading me about would fly down and offer you the chance to get away from here, and have the kind of good times your friends are having?"
"It might frighten Don Dolor; I think from his appearance when he came that he isn't used to good fairies," laughed Happie. Then the smile faded and she looked gravely up the road ahead of her. It ascended steeply, and as they followed it the mountains began to come in sight over the hill crest. All along the way the huckleberries were in bloom, and the sheep laurel touched grayness of rocks, and brownness of ill-nourished brambles into brightness with its purpling pink.
Up the rough roads which opened at intervals through the woods on either side of the main road, one saw masses of pink and white beauty, announcing the perfection of the mountain laurel growing and blossoming aside from the thoroughfares. And the rhododendron buds of the previous autumn were swelling and showing pink along their cone-like edges, under the light brown of their sticky outer covering. Soon the roadside would be glorified by their splendor. Cleared fields made patches of vivid green against the serried trunks of the trees in the woods, and the breeze blew down, pure and vivifying from the mountains.
Happie drew another long breath. She would like to join her friends, but this was beautiful. It seemed, even to her inexperience, a life of greater reality; of peace that was beyond estimate, and she was not sure that she would give it up if she could.
"I don't know, Gretta, whether I wish for that fairy or not," she said seriously. "I do begin to love my life here. Of course those letters set my feet twitching and my heart throbbing to go after those nice girls and their nice times, but I'm not sure. And when I think of you, and that you'd miss me and be more lonely for having had me, then I am sure! I am glad to stay here, Gretta," she added, remembering that this was what Gretta was longing to hear her say.
Gretta smiled, and then sighed. "You try to think so, but I wouldn't like to give you the chance to get away; I'm afraid Crestville couldn't hold you."
Gretta jumped down at the Neumann gate and Happie drove home alone, a task that would have been adventuresome, considering that she had never driven, had not Don Dolor a strong desire to get back to his stable and an accurate knowledge of where to find it.
"Hallo there, Icaria!" cried Bob coming around the corner to help his sister. "How did you get on driving the borrowed chariot?"
"I couldn't be as classical as you are, not if I were a Wingless Victory," said Happie, stubbing her toe as she jumped from the buggy, and landing on one knee on the turf.
"You're wingless all right," laughed Bob. "That comes of trying to wither your brother when he makes graceful allusions to Icarus—gets his genders right, too!"
"Pooh! You got Ralph to help you with that careless allusion; got out your Bulfinch's Age of Fable to find out who it was that drove his father's chariot, most likely, to be ready to impress me," said Happie rubbing her bruised knee. "We got on all right; I believe the don's going to turn out a fine horse."
"He's one already," said Bob. "Come to ride to the barn, Penny?" he asked as Penny appeared on the top step looking wistful. "And Laura, the dignified? Ralph is going to take the horse around. Any one else coming forth? You can ride in layers such a short distance."
"I don't mind if I come fourth," said Polly, misinterpreting Bob's meaning. "That'll be two for the seat, and another two in their laps."
"Twice two are four, problematical Polly," laughed Bob. "You are forth already in my sense, but you may be fourth in yours, if you want to be. Go ahead, Ralph. I'll be there on foot in a week or so to unharness."
Happie ran into the house. She found her mother sewing, and Margery, looking sweet and young ladyfied, bending over her Mexican work.
"Six letters, motherums; two yours, one Margery's, three mine," Happie said, throwing herself down and fanning herself with her hat.
Mrs. Scollard read her first letter, which proved to be but a note, then opened the second one, read it, glanced at her two daughters with heightened color, and read it over. The elder girl was reading her letter from a girl friend, and trying not to show that it moved her, while the other munched a square of fig paste, looking absently out of the window, blissfully unconscious of what was in her mother's mind.
"This letter is from Auntie Cam, girls," Mrs. Scollard said at last.
"Yes, I thought so," said Happie. "She's a nice Auntie Cam, nicer than most own aunts; what does she say? I was wondering, motherums, if Aunt Keren would mind if we got a boulder and made a rockery out there on the side of the lawn? Only it isn't a lawn; it's just grass."
"Now, Happie, why don't you let mother tell us about Auntie Cam?" protested Margery. "As if you wanted to make a rockery this moment, right on top of your own question!"
"Somebody—two bodies, in a way—has an invitation from Auntie Cam that I rather dread to deliver," said their mother slowly.
Happie straightened her listless young figure and Margery dropped her letter, turning to her mother with parted lips, that asked the question they did not utter.
"Auntie Cam says, my dear lassies, that she would like to have Happie"—Margery turned away to hide the tears that sprang into her eyes in spite of herself, and Happie caught her breath—"have Happie come to her in New York, where she has returned on business for a few days, and go back with her to spend the rest of the summer with her and Edith at Bar Harbor, coming home by way of the White Mountains in September."
"Oh, mother, mother!" cried Happie springing up and whirling about in a delirium of joy.
"And she says, furthermore, that Elsie Barker will be there next month," continued Mrs. Scollard.
"I know, I know; I got a letter from her to-day! Did you ever hear of such a magnificent, glorious, blissful thing in all your life?" Happie demanded of no one in particular.
"Auntie Cam says that she asks Happie because she is Edith and Elsie's friend, and because she regards her as especially her girl, but that if for any reason Happie would not care to go, or could not go, she will take Margery instead, and not quarrel with her good fortune, but consider herself very fortunate—so she says—to be allowed to borrow either of my girls," said Mrs. Scollard with a smile of pleasure in this appreciation of her girls. "Now the invitation is Happie's first, I gather from your showing no sort of reluctance when you heard of it, Hapsie dear, that you are willing to accept Auntie Cam's invitation. There isn't much need of asking if you want to go! I didn't realize that you would hail the chance to get away with such boundless rapture; I really thought you were getting contented in Crestville. You have been a good child to hide your feelings so bravely, Hapsie-girl, and you deserve your good fortune. What's the matter?"
Happie's ecstasy was fading out, and in its place a troubled look was creeping into her eyes as she turned them upon Margery. Margery had risen, and was looking so hard out of the window that there was no possibility of thinking she was interested merely in the familiar apple trees and the long grass, fast ripening into Don Dolor's hay. It did not need the tear that splashed on the window sill to tell Happie that her sister was struggling to hide a disappointment too bitter to be borne without a struggle.
Happie spoke slowly, with an effort. "Why, I have been contented here lately, motherums," she said. "Of course I was glad at first when I thought of going to Bar Harbor, and with Auntie Cam. It would be a perfectly scrumptious time! But when I remember how long it would be—I'd have to be away from home so long—maybe I'd better—I don't have to decide this minute, do I, mother?" She stopped her hesitating suggestions, feeling that her voice was getting unreliable. It seemed to her that never in all her life had she been so tempted.
Her mother saw her glance at Margery, and divined the truth.
"My dear, unselfish girl!" she thought. But all she said was: "Of course you do not have to decide at once, Hapsie. You ought to have at least one night in which to decide between the rival attractions of two such resorts as Bar Harbor and Crestville!"
Happie smiled dismally. "I'll go up-stairs to think; I can think better there. I'm afraid when I look out of our window at my mountains I'll decide to stay here," she said, and ran away with her brown paper bag of plebeian candies on which a tear of sacrifice fell as she ran.
When she left the room Happie knew that her decision was already made; she had run away only to gain strength to announce it.
She closed the door behind her, tossed her bag and hat on the bed, and dropped into the willow rocking-chair by the window that looked towards the east and the mountains. Polly's big doll had to be dispossessed for her benefit, so Happie considerately took her bisque niece on her knee, in fair exchange for Phyllis Lovelock's seat, which she usurped.
"Margery wants to go," announced Happie, absentmindedly rearranging the doll's hair. "She thought at first that it was she who was to go, and when mother went on to say that I was Auntie Cam's first choice, she had to walk away to the window 'to hide her grief,' as novels say. She didn't hide it so very well; I saw that tear fall on the window sill! Of course I shan't go; that's settled." She pointed this announcement by a vigorous jerk of Phyllis' arm which sent it upward, giving the doll the effect of appealing to heaven to demand if this were not hard.
"No one will ever know how much I wanted to go—not if I can help it! Elsie and Edith both there, and boating, and bathing, and dancing—oh, me! Margery hasn't a friend there, but then the rest will be good for her; she looks tired all the time, and of course she'll find nice girls whom she will like—Margery makes friends. She doesn't like living here, and I do—or at least I think I do when there isn't any chance to get away. No; that isn't honest: I do like it, very much! Didn't I tell Gretta this very afternoon that I was glad to stay here? She said she wouldn't like to give me a chance to get away. And there was the chance in my hand that very moment, and I did jump at it wildly the instant I heard of it! Gretta saw clearer than I did! Poor Gretta! What a mean thing I am to fly off and forget all about her the first time I am tempted—but this was a fearful temptation, Edith and Elsie and all!" She pushed down Phyllis' upraised arm, and stood her upright with one foot on her knee, the other at right angles to the doll's body as it had been bent in sitting.
"You look rakish, my dear," remarked mercurial Happie, straightening the misplaced member and smoothing her niece's gown. "Or are you hinting that I should not kick? I'm not kicking, miss, in the first place, and in the second place you should not use slang. Margery is older than I, and fonder of society; she isn't as happy as I am here—that is not intended as a pun on my name, Phyllis—and she has been so sweet and patient that she richly deserves her luck. I don't grudge it to her, not one bit, and I wouldn't go—now that I've had time to think about it—not for anything! I couldn't enjoy one moment remembering I was there at Margery's cost. But I think, Miss Phyllis Lovelocks, that you might allow me one little natural pang, all by ourselves, because I'd have had fun without end all the time I was away. You might admit—since no one hears us—that dusting, bed-making, dish-washing palls on one occasionally, and even weeding a garden on a hot day is not pure bliss. I don't suppose there was a weed in the Garden of Eden, and anyway Eve's back didn't ache; it's only sinful backs that ache." Happie laughed again and wiped away a few tears that still betrayed her.
Then she arose, depositing Phyllis Lovelocks once more in her place in the rocking-chair. She stood for a moment looking out seriously on the mountains. Then she sighed, smiled and turned away.
"I really do love you, and I think I should miss you and be glad to get back to you. But it's lucky you're so big, because you've got to take the place of a big chance," she said, turning away as she heard her mother come up-stairs and go into her room across the narrow hall. Happie threw open her door and ran after her, hoping that there were no telltale stains on her cheeks.
"Mother, mama, motherums," she cried. "Let me come; I want to tell you. I'm not going."
Mrs. Scollard turned quickly and threw her arms around her girl with a movement entirely girlish. "You dear Happie!" she cried. "I knew you wouldn't, and I know why! You should have done precisely as you chose, my darling, but I really think that Margery ought to go, and needs the pleasure more than you. Margery is drifting in young ladyhood, while Happie, I am thankful to say, is unadulterated girlishness still."
"Of course she's the one to go, motherums; she's ever so much lonelier here than I am," said Happie staunchly. "You see when I flew up so rapturously, I hadn't had time for second thought."
"Proverbially the best," supplemented her mother. "I am very glad that you reconsidered, Happie, but I'd like you to understand that I see clearly through your transparent little self, and realize what you are doing for Margery."
Happie blushed and turned away. "Oh, I want to stay," she said lightly.
"Of course you do," assented her mother. "There are many different ways of wanting a thing, my Hapsie. But I'll tell you in strictest confidence that I am selfishly glad that I am to keep you. I don't see really, how we could have borne up if Auntie Cam had carried off the Ark's sunshine."
Happie turned back to give her mother an emphatic and hasty kiss before she escaped; she was still perilously near to tears. Her mother's words had robbed her sacrifice of all sting, as Mrs. Scollard knew that they would, for Happie dearly loved to be a comfort.
Margery received the decision that Happie was to stay and she to go with a solemn rapture, too deep for words. The next few days were given up to hurried preparations for her departure. The invitation had come on Wednesday, and Mrs. Charleford, whom the young Scollards had known all their lives as Auntie Cam, had arranged that her guest was to come to her on Monday.
It was short notice and rapid work; the Ark was submerged in the waters of confusion. Still, as Rosie Gruber sensibly observed: "There wasn't no use in worrying. What Margery had she had, and what she hadn't she hadn't, so what good did it do to git all dragged out fussin' over things yet?"
That good and efficient person ironed at night and arose an hour earlier than her four o'clock routine to lend her useful hands to preparing Margery's wardrobe.
"Fortunately you are still a young girl, dearie," said her mother folding the soft mull which Rosie had pressed. "You are still in the class which the fashion catalogues call: Misses. In another year you will be old enough to require more if you go into the great world, but simplicity is fitting and fairest for a young girl. This is your last year of slipping into the throng unheralded, Margery; make the most of its advantages, dearie. I really think you are sufficiently provided, without being obliged to add: 'Considering.' Your last year's gowns are so refreshed that I am satisfied with your little wardrobe, at least for this season, while you are still little Margery."
The mother's voice was wistful. Margery was so sweet and gentle that her gentle mother clung to her passing hours of young girlhood, shrinking from the thought of life and its burdens which stood just on her threshold, stretching out siren hands to her eldest born.
Miss Bradbury came into the room with six handkerchiefs in one hand.
"This is my contribution to your outfit, Margaret," she said. "Dainty handkerchiefs and good shoes are my weakness. Don't shed a tear on one of these; that's all I ask."
Margery thanked her with her gentle smile. She did not know until later, when she shook the first of the pile out of its folds, that Miss Keren had laid two crisp ten dollar bills between them, guessing that Mrs. Scollard's slender store was too depleted to allow her to give the girl much money to use as young girls like to use it, for the candy and soda, and the small luxuries of the toilet dear to seventeen.
"You've been a perfect darling, Happie; a dear, unselfish, blessed old darling, all the way through!" cried Margery throwing her arms around her sister, although in one hand dangled four belts, and the other clutched a bunch of turnover collars. Happie had just brought Margery her two stick pins, and delicate neckchain of fine gold links, holding turquoises set in dull gold.
"That's all right, Margery; you mean well, but your remarks are a trifle unjust to me. I am all of those things you mention, all of the time, yet you seem to be a trifle surprised. It would give a stranger a false idea of me, Margery; I am obliged to protest against your injustice," cried Happie with a mock frown.
"Isn't she nice?" exclaimed Polly from her vantage point at the foot of the bed where she was ensconced with her doll, watching the packing.
"I hope you will enjoy the orchestras and the music in the hotels, Margery," said Laura with an air that suggested its being extremely unlikely. "It's dreadful to never hear any music; there isn't a bit in Crestville."
"It's dreadful to split infinitives, Laura," said Bob, entering unexpectedly. "What's the wail about now? Still poor old Crestville? Besides, you're wrong about the music; I know of several melodeons in town. Ralph and I are going to the store; want anything from the emporium?"
"Yes, and two or three of the girls taking lessons by correspondence yet!" exclaimed Rosie indignantly from the depths of a Gladstone bag which she was sweeping clean of imaginary dust. "We're not so dumb here as Laura thinks. Don't you fergit my blueing, Bob, and I guess you might as well bring along some flour; ours is almost all, and I've got to bake to-morrow, with biscuits for tea Sunday—Miss Bradbury likes 'em so!"
"Yes, and the rest like 'em more so," assented Bob. "Flour and blueing, mix carefully and take regularly to depress your spirits. All right, Rosie. 'Bye, mother." And Bob departed, leaving Rosie's gaunt shoulders shaking over his exquisite wit.
Monday morning came very quickly. The entire family dreaded the three months which should be spent without Margery, and to no one else in all the world than her girlhood friend did Mrs. Scollard feel that she could have borne to intrust her pretty daughter. She tasted in imagination the loneliness and motherly anxiety which she must feel before she got her back again.
Laura reveled in the opportunity for sentimental melancholy, composing a song entitled "Parting," according to her custom on all family events.
Happie found it hard to see Margery depart; her desire for the outing was swallowed up in the realization that for the first time in their lives she and Margery were to be separated.
The group of stay-at-homes gave Margery many last injunctions as to what she should do on arriving in the Jersey station at which Mrs. Charleford was to meet her, and they watched her skirt around the corner of the car door, and waved their good-byes to her from the platform, where they gathered to wave at her in the car window, until the train was lost to sight around the curve.
Then, true to their principles, Bob and Happie shook off their depression and bestirred themselves.
"Got to haul hay to-day," drawled Bob, in accurate mimicry of Jake Shale's twang. "If you want to git that there hay in, Miss Bradbury, you'd might as well come along, fer they hain't much time these June days, 'n' the sun's hot."
"I was taught there was more time in June days than in any others, Mr. Shale," said Miss Bradbury, while his mother laughed in response to Bob's effort to cheer her. "However, I'm ready to go home if you're ready to drive me."
Happie and Laura walked home from the village, and Laura hummed her latest song, "Parting," as they walked, such a dismal air that Happie was not equal to sustained conversation to such an accompaniment.
At the Neumann gate Happie paused. "I see Gretta out there hanging up her clothes," she said. "I'm going to ask her if she can't steal off this afternoon when we are haying. We'll make a jollification of it. You can go on, Laura; I'll come in a few minutes; no one would dare linger at the Neumanns' on a Monday morning."
Happie ran over the grass and seized Gretta's shoulders, herself unseen. Gretta screamed and then hailed Happie joyfully.
"My, but you scared me!" she cried. "Margery gone?"
Happie nodded. "And I want you to come up this afternoon and get in hay with us—we want to make it a frolic, and beside, you really do know how to load a wagon as well as any farmer, so Rosie says. But it's not for work I want you; you know that. Come over, Gretta, and help us be merry, for I'm afraid we miss Margery."
"I guess," assented Gretta. "I'll come, if I can get my clothes in, and folded to iron in the morning. And now Margery's gone I want to tell you that I know how you stayed here and let her go in your place—Rosie Gruber told us. You said you'd stay here, even if you got a chance to go, but I couldn't believe it. Still, I know how bad you wanted to go, so I guess I was half way right, after all. Never mind," she added hastily, as Happie showed symptoms of interrupting her. "That's all right; I don't blame you. All I wanted to try and tell you was that I guess you haven't an idea of how glad I am you stayed. I don't seem to know how to say it, so I haven't let you know how much good you're doing me. If it's any comfort to you, you can be sure of one thing—I'd have been miserable if you'd gone. I didn't know the difference you were making, not rightly know it, till I heard from Rosie that I might have lost you. It took my breath away. You like to make folks happy, so don't be sorry you let Margery go, Happie dear."
Happie had never before heard a speech of one third this length from Gretta; she saw that the girl was trying to break through her reticence to comfort her for the regret which she fancied Happie must feel.
"Why, you dear Gretta!" she cried. "I do know you need me, and I do see you're happier and more girlish since I found you—found you in the paint pot, like 'the little husband no bigger than my thumb' of Mother Goose fame. You are quite, quite wrong if you think I am sorry that I could not go instead of Margery. At first I did want to go; that's true, not because I don't like Crestville, but because any girl would jump at such a chance as that—at first. But I'm delighted that it's Margery and not I, who is on the train, and I'm glad for my own sake, not for hers alone. So be satisfied that I am satisfied, and come over to help us be happy in this lovely country life."
"I'll come—unless I can't," said Gretta, and Happie ran homeward after Laura.
By three o'clock Gretta's fresh starched pink sunbonnet appeared down the road, bobbing up and down under the trees. The Scollards were all out in the field with Ralph, all save Happie, who had come in to watch for Gretta and to take her out with her. But Gretta did not seem to know that she was shy; her foot was on her native heath, she carried her own pitchfork, and in hay-making it was not she, but the city children who were at a disadvantage.
"You'd better let me load," she said, nodding at Peter Kuntz who had taken Jake Shale's place that afternoon. It always surprised the inmates of the Ark that there was, apparently, no inequality of age in Crestville. Everybody knew everybody else with the intimacy of first names and identical ages, even if one were eight and the other eighty.