"Now, Eunice, you keep still!" interposed Rosie sharply. "They don't know nothin' about that there story, and no one knows if there's a word of truth in it."
Neither of her hostesses were paying very strict attention to the visitor's remarks, but Happie came forward at once from the window. "Aunt Keren," she said, "this is the second time Miss Neumann has hinted that this house is not rightfully yours, only the first time she did more than hint—she said straight out that it belonged to Gretta. I asked Gretta what it meant, but she said nothing at all. Now Rosie seems to have heard of it. Wouldn't you like to understand it?"
"Of course," said Miss Bradbury sharply, forgetting to keep the current of electricity in safe directions, and endangering her life by letting her feet slip from the round of her second chair. "Tell us what you know, Miss Neumann—or Rosie."
"I know all there is to know, and it's all foolishness," said Rosie, forestalling Eunice. "Suppose I git Emmaline Gulick a cup of tea, she's that wet."
"By all means the tea, and for us all, please, but what is the story?" insisted Miss Bradbury, alert as she became convinced there really was a story.
"Gretta's grandmother owned this house," began Eunice, nothing loath to tell the tale which Rosie would gladly have suppressed. "She owned it before she went and married a second time, married old Bittenbender yet! Everybody knew what he was, they say. She found out her mistake, and it didn't take long neither, but 'tain't so easy cuttin' the hangman's rope as 'tis tyin' it. She had to make the best of what there wasn't no best to. She said often and often that she'd made a will leavin' everything she had to her son—that was Gretta's father. But when she come to die her son was dead and buried before her, and there wasn't no will nowheres. So old Bittenbender he took the house, and there wasn't nobody to stop him. We couldn't go to law about it; we hadn't the money nor the time to be on the court for dear knows how many years. Gretta hadn't no other relations to make a fuss, so it stood the way 'twas. If they'd found the will old Bittenbender couldn't have took it, but as 'twas, he did. Then when he'd had it as long's he wanted it, and he was goin' off to live with his folks in Northampton County—he'd had a stroke and couldn't live on alone—why, didn't he up and give over the place to you instead of payin' you what he owed you in money, and lettin' the place for Gretta, who'd ought to have had it by rights in the first place! The Bittenbenders had plenty money, so there wasn't no reason why he couldn't have paid up if he'd had a mind to. He's dead now himself, and you've got the place, but you hadn't ought to have had it, and if 'twas me I shouldn't want it, knowin' how 'twas."
Miss Bradbury and Mrs. Scollard exchanged perturbed glances, while the children watched them anxiously.
"Miss Neumann," said Miss Bradbury at last, "this is a most amazing story. Of course you realize that it is based on mere rumor; there is no proof that Gretta's grandmother made a will, and it is possible that it was she who failed in her duty of providing for the child. It is possible that Mr. Bittenbender had a legal right to the place. Certainly I am guiltless of so much as a suspicion that any one was wronged by his holding it and relinquishing it to me. All that I can do is to try to discover the truth. You may rest assured that I shall deal entirely honestly, not merely according to the letter of the law, but according to its spirit, and should do so were it a stranger who was affected by this issue, and not Gretta, of whom we are so fond."
"It don't do much good to talk," said Eunice defiantly. "I meant to come up and tell you about this, come a-purpose, but now the rain's drove me in here I thought I might as well leave you know what's on my mind when I'd got the chance. Gretta's less good than ever to us. She's all took up with you folks here, and she's gittin' more and more ungrateful to us, who's done all she's had done fer her since she was five years old."
"And that hain't much," Rosie burst forth. "You hadn't ought to talk, Eunice; you had ought to remember we was all lookin' on, and everybody in Crestville knews Gretta's more'n earned the interest on the time before she could do anything. You come out in the kitchen with me and I'll give you some tea. Then I guess, Miss Bradbury, they might as well go up-stairs and go to bed. It's ten o'clock already, and the storm's as fierce as ever, and it'll be late till it stops, if 'tain't morning. You make Emmaline understand, Eunice, and you and Reba kin go to bed in my room."
"I guess I won't drink tea at this hour!" exclaimed Eunice indignantly, "and I hain't a-goin' to bed. Emmaline's kind of feeble; if you want to take her up to your room and leave her lay till she's called, I don't care, but I hain't goin' to bed, nor Reba hain't. I won't keep you folks up; you kin let us with Rosie, and go to bed if you want to. I wanted to tell you about this house, and now I'm satisfied."
"I'll take 'em out in the kitchen," whispered Rosie, rigid with indignant loyalty to Miss Bradbury. "Don't you worry about that story; nobody don't know the truth, anyhow."
Miss Bradbury nodded, quite unperturbed, and said aloud: "I shall make it my business to learn the truth, Rosie."
Poor old deaf Emmaline Gulick was taken up to Rosie's little room to rest, and soon fell comfortably asleep, unconscious of the roar of thunder.
Laura and Polly fell asleep with Jeunesse Dorée on the couch, and their mother, with Bob and Happie, discussed in all its bearings the exciting tale they had just heard, Miss Bradbury much less disturbed than any of them.
The children discovered that they had grown fonder of the Ark than they knew, and it was not wholly pleasant to find any one, even Gretta, its owner instead of themselves—for so thoroughly had Aunt Keren welded them into one family that the Ark seemed as much theirs as hers.
It was midnight when the storm finally broke away sufficiently to allow the refugees from its fury to continue the short remainder of their journey.
Reba went up to awaken Emmaline Gulick. It was not an easy task. Deaf to all sounds, sunk in the first heavy sleep of weariness and increasing years, Reba's voice could not penetrate Emmaline's consciousness.
She laid her hand upon the sleeper's arm. "Emmaline, Emmaline, wake up!" she cried. "It hain't raining now and we're goin' home. Hurry up, Emmaline!"
Emmaline had one abiding dread, and that was fire. As she struggled to the surface of the waking world, that fear asserted itself. She could not hear a word that Reba said; she did not know where she was, but of one thing she was instantly certain. Wherever she was the place was on fire, and she must run for her life!
She snatched a blanket and threw it around her, although she had lain down completely dressed. Wrapped in this blanket, with its striped red border wandering fantastically around her thin, small figure, she ran down-stairs, followed by Reba vainly shouting to her to stop, and entirely at sea as to what ailed her elderly friend.
The family had gathered at the foot of the stairs waiting to see their guests depart; Eunice was already in the carriage at the door. They heard Reba calling frantically to Emmaline to stop, heard her say: "Oh, she's gone crazy! Stop her, Eunice!" They saw the little gray-haired creature, with the gorgeous blanket enveloping her, fly down the stairs and out of the front door, hotly pursued by Reba, and the walls echoed to the children's irrepressible whoop of delight.
It was too dark outside to see clearly the violence with which Emmaline threw herself into the buggy, falling on her knees and getting wound up in the blanket in her haste, but the amazed inmates of the Ark heard Eunice cry: "Git ap!" as Emmaline pulled Reba in after her with the strength of terror and saw the horse start off, probably no less surprised than the human beings behind him. Then they saw Eunice's head thrust out of the side of the buggy, and heard her voice call back in profound disgust: "I'll send the blanket back to-morrer! She thinks the house's afire!"
With that the unexpected visitors made their hasty exit, and all the young Scollards fell in a heap on the lower steps of the stairs, rolling and rocking in agonies of laughter.
When the family assembled at the breakfast table on the following morning, and had laughed their fill at the memory of the funny exit of the preceding evening, they discovered that the visitors had left a residuum of discomfort in the mind of each member of the family who was old enough to realize the full import of Eunice Neumann's story about the house.
It would be bad enough in any case to feel that their enjoyment of the Ark was the fruit of dishonesty, but when the person who suffered from that dishonesty was Gretta, Gretta of whom they had all grown so fond, and who so sorely needed justice done her, it was unbearable to feel that they might be innocently adding to her wrongs by depriving her of her property.
Therefore when they espied Gretta coming up the road with the blanket which Emmaline Gulick had carried off in her stampede from her fancied fire, Happie rushed to meet her with more than her usual eagerness, and dragged Gretta into the dining-room, completely bewildered by the flood of questions and incomprehensible explanations with which Happie was deluging her.
Miss Bradbury greeted the young girl with a hint of tenderness unlike her usual manner, and Mrs. Scollard kissed her very gently. Gretta perched herself on a chair beside the latter, fanning herself with her sunbonnet and twisting a corner of the apron which she never discarded when she came on an errand, as she never wore it when making a social call, thereby marking the difference between the two.
"I'm sure I don't know what Happie is trying to tell me," she said with a whimsical twist of the lips. "She always talks so fast that I have to listen with every bit of me—I'm used to folks that talk slow, you know. But this time an automobile couldn't keep up with her! All I can make out is that Eunice told you something about this house being mine by rights, and that it worries you."
"You seem to have kept up pretty well, considering you haven't an automobile, Gretta," said Bob. "That's the story in a nutshell."
"I expect you to tell me all that you know of the matter, Gretta," said Miss Bradbury. "I have no particular desire to wrong any one, and I don't purpose beginning with you."
"I don't know one thing about it, Miss Bradbury, and that's the truth. All I have heard I have heard from Eunice, and you may be sure she didn't leave out much when she told you about it," said Gretta. "Everybody around here who knew her says my grandmother meant to have willed me this house, but there never was any will found, and that's all there is to it. There's no reason why you should leave—let—it worry you. I didn't get the house, and it's a good thing for me that you did, instead of somebody else."
"I shall certainly look into the matter thoroughly, and if the house is yours you shall have it as soon as I can deliver it. Then I'll rent it from you, if you will lease it to me," said Miss Bradbury with such a briskly ready air that it suggested a pen already in her hand with which to sign a lease.
Gretta laughed carelessly as she arose to go. "There isn't a single thing to find out, nor to talk about," she declared. "Eunice has tried to find out, but she didn't get at anything more than she knew before, and she would if there was anything to find out. She'd do more than get a house for me, to get rid of me! I guess I'll have to ask you to find me a place of some sort in the city next winter; I don't believe I can stay here."
The pretty face clouded and the dark eyes filled with tears. More painful to Gretta than the hard fact that she was homeless and resourceless was the injustice of her cousins' treatment of her, and that, do what she would, she could win no love from them, but was considered a burden and a nuisance.
"It's all coming out some way, Gretta!" cried Happie, throwing her arms around the girl so impulsively that the sunbonnet which she was just tying on flew across the room.
Bob picked up the bonnet and handed it to Gretta with a deep bow, hand on heart, in true colonial manner.
"Don't you worry, Gretta," he said. "We'll all go into business together in New York this winter. We've got so we feel you're one of the family—and I guess we feel as if we owned the Ark, instead of Aunt Keren! We wouldn't be willing to disembark from it, even to give it to you! This is a nice sort of place, after all."
"I don't know any other," said Gretta with a grateful smile of acknowledgment to Bob for his including her in family plans, "but this house looks perfectly beautiful to me. There isn't any other around here half so pretty as you have made this one. And I don't believe I could be happy long away from Crestville. No matter what fine things I looked at I'm sure my eyes would ache for a sight of those mountains."
She turned towards the window as she spoke, and her eyes brightened lovingly as they rested on the mountain peaks, just visible above the trees. Then she turned back to the friends who had cheered her lonely life, and smiled brightly, brushing away a tear or two that glistened on her lashes.
"Don't you worry about me, dear folks," she said. "You have made me rich already, and the house doesn't matter." Then she fairly ran away, embarrassed by her unwonted betrayal of feeling.
Miss Bradbury took Don Dolor and one of the Scollards and drove about cross-examining every old man or woman who might know something definite of Mrs. Bittenbender's will. But in every instance she failed in getting more than an unanimous testimony to the misfortune which Gretta's grandmother's second marriage had been, and to the fact that she had intended willing everything tight and fast to her son and his child, out of the reach of the Bittenbender grasping fingers. That she had done so nobody could prove, and it was certain that the son, Gretta's father, had died some months before his mother. To be sure, there were those who declared that they had heard Mrs. Bittenbender say, not that she would make this will, but that she had made it. Still, the will itself was not in evidence, and finally Miss Bradbury gave up the investigation, baffled, still uneasy in her mind, but unable to see that it was her duty to give up the farm.
For justice, to be wise and efficacious, must include justice to oneself. The farm had come to Miss Bradbury in payment of a debt; she could not prove that it had come to her from other than its legal owner. And her plans for the future made it well for all concerned that the Ark should belong to upright, big-hearted Keren-happuch Bradbury. The matter resolved itself into letting everything go on as it was, holding the farm in readiness to give it up, should proof arise that it was not Miss Bradbury's, except by the wrong-doing of the late Bittenbender, and in the meantime trying more than ever to make up to Gretta for her hard fate.
While the question was under discussion, and was the uppermost interest in the Ark, the weeks of August slipped by into the first week of September, and the letter for which the Scollards were eagerly looking came from Margery, announcing her return.
A breath of fresh air seemed to blow through the Ark on the opening of that letter. All the inmates revived as they did when the strong September winds swept down the mountains, driving off the August heaviness.
Happie fell to garnishing her room for Margery to return to, re-covering chair cushions, washing and furbishing the lace of the pin cushion. Laura began at once the composition of a Song of Welcome, the first musical feat that she had essayed since the disastrous Fourth.
Polly began to sew for dear life on a new gown for Phyllis Lovelocks, that she might be suitably attired to greet her traveled aunt. Even little Penny cleaned her doll house, and weeded industriously the tiny garden which had been given her, and in which the weeds so far exceeded the flowers that the marigold which had survived the choking process fatal to Penny's other seeds, stood out, looking conspicuously out of place among its ragged comrades.
Bob went about whistling, putting fine touches on handsome Don Dolor's glossy coat and harness, and getting the place into better condition than ever, though all summer the garden had been a credit to an inexperienced boy. Miss Bradbury did not say much, but she watched, and fully appreciated the manly lad who had shouldered his disagreeable and unaccustomed tasks without a murmur, and had performed them so well that the farm—"and the cows and calves and the horse," Happie said—blossomed like the tropics.
Rosie cleaned house with a fervor that was more like a fever, especially that no one save herself could see a speck in all her domain. But to Rosie's mind, house-cleaning was necessary before any event; it was to her a ceremonial, not unlike the ablutions of the Jews.
As to Margery's mother, she performed no unusual tasks, but went about the ordinary ones with such a happy, brooding look that it betrayed how much she had missed her eldest, and how ill a mother can spare one child, even from a large flock.
Every corner of the Ark was filled with glad expectancy, and the country was growing lovelier every moment. The summer boarders who had thronged into the mountains were daily crowding the little Crestville station platform, returning to the two great cities which poured their citizens into Pennsylvania for the summer.
The Scollards watched these crowds with a feeling of pity, to their own unbounded surprise, for they had not realized how entirely they were recovered from their first homesickness. It seemed hard to be going back now that everything was at its best, and hourly growing better—if a paradox that seemed to be true might be permitted.
"Perfect weather for Margery," said Mrs. Scollard with profound satisfaction.
"Expressly for her," Miss Bradbury agreed with a smile, but she looked as pleased with the prospect of getting back their gentle girl as her mother could ask.
"We ought not to have called Rosie the dove; if we hadn't we could have said that Margery was the dove, returning after many days," suggested Laura.
"Yes; she's the dove-like one of this family," Bob agreed.
"I wonder what she may have found on the face of the waters, on her first flight without me. Of course she has written faithfully, but letters do not tell one much. I hope she will not return less our dove-like Margery," said her mother.
"No fear, motherums," cried Happie with conviction. "Only an anxious mother could imagine Margery changed. She is never anything but her quiet self; she never puts on—nor takes off"—Happie paused to chuckle a little over her logical new expression—"never puts on nor takes off airs, nor does anything but just go on breathing and being the way she was meant to breathe and to be, and nothing on this earth could make her different. She's a gentle girl, but she's not one bit easily influenced. Margery would be just the same Margery if she were made empress of the French as suddenly as Josephine was, or if she were put down in a tenement to make alpaca coats and eat limburger cheese all her days."
"Well, I wouldn't go as far as that, Hapsie," remarked Bob, departing to harness. "If limburger's influence is as strong as its odor, it ought to affect any one."
Bob profited this time by his labors and position of coachman, for he was secure of meeting Margery. The others had to debate which were to go; it ended in Laura's going with the two younger children, and Happie's staying at home with her mother to welcome the traveler in the role of Daughter of the House.
In the glorious September sunset, through the delicious odor of the ripened wild grapes, Don Dolor brought Margery up the hill home. Happie sprang down the steps to greet her, and then stood still, not only to allow her mother her right of the first embrace, but because it seemed to her that after all it was a different Margery from the one who had happily, yet tearfully, bidden them good-bye more than two months before, whose pretty face now smiled gladly at them over the children's shoulders.
The quick perception of the change held Happie's flying feet, bringing a pang with it, but only for the briefest of seconds. As soon as her mother released her from her clinging embrace, Happie had Margery in her arms, and was crushing her dainty linen in a way that left no doubt of her joy in getting her sister back again.
Margery stood on the upper step of the Ark and looked around her, the sunset resting on her face. In her eyes there was a greater radiance of joy, and around her lips an expression of deeper sweetness than when she left them. Her voice thrilled with new music, though all that she said was: "Oh, it's good to be here again, and I am so glad to see you all!"
Miss Bradbury followed Mrs. Scollard's glance to Margery and nodded emphatically to her telegram, thus delivered, that she found her girl most good to look upon.
"I should be glad of a little, even the least notice from Happie; I should like to be considered some consequence in my own Ark," she said with deep pathos, as Happie tripped over her foot without knowing that she had done so.
Happie wheeled around with a laugh. "Oh, Aunt Keren," she cried, "you haven't blossomed into a lovely young lady since I last saw you, and I truly believe that Margery has!"
Margery had. Rosie saw it the instant that Margery entered the house, and put out her sea-browned hand to clasp faithful Rosie's hard one. Gretta saw it when she ran up after tea to add a word to the welcoming chorus, and even Mahlon—waxing something like alive since he had benefited by his wife's cooking—even Mahlon said: "Guess Margery's been looking 'round. She's woke up someway since she was 'way off wherever 'twas."
After the children had been tucked away for the night, Margery and Happie crept to their room where they could be together alone once more, looking out at the mountains. The whole world was flooded with the radiance of the harvest moon, and the mountains rose up in its light with the heavy shadows of their own peaks touching the dimmed stars, dark amid the glory of the white night.
Happie curled herself up at Margery's feet. She felt unwontedly long and awkward, conscious of her immaturity and a trifle shy, as she gazed up at Margery, sitting in her white kimono in the chair above her, her soft, luxuriant hair falling around her shoulders, her elbow resting on the window-sill, and her eyes gazing, dreamily bright in the moonlight, at the mountains with a gaze that seemed to look beyond them.
"The ocean is glorious on these moonlight nights," said Margery softly. "But I am not sure that the mountains are not even more beautiful. The contrast of their shadows makes the light more splendid—and then one feels as if they were hiding all sorts of mysteries. Almost anything might be in those hills—or come out from them."
"What will you do, Margery, if we stay here all winter? You know mother is not strong enough yet to take her position, and Aunt Keren says we are welcome to live in the Ark if we can make it go. Of course, we should go to town for visits—and you would have most of those visits," said Happie, remembering that this dawning young lady sister must have the benefit of New York, while she bided her time at home.
"Oh, I shall not mind at all," said Margery. "Indeed, I almost think I should prefer to stay. I am in my eighteenth year——"
"Yes, but how far in it?" interrupted Happie with a recurrence of her brief pang in the moment of meeting Margery, a vague jealousy of some unknown thing that was stealing her sister.
"Not far," smiled Margery. "But quite far enough to be slipping towards twenty so fast that it takes my breath away. I should be content to stay in the country all winter, reading and studying with mother, and learning all sorts of things. A woman ought to know all about cooking, mending, sewing—all those housewifely tasks—and I don't feel as if I knew anything, though I used to think I knew a great deal. Oh, yes; I should be very busy and quite happy if I stayed in the country all winter, and did not go to New York once."
"What has come over you?" demanded Happie, feeling certain, though she could not have told why, that it was something that she did not like. "And a woman, you say! Do you consider yourself a woman at your age?"
"No, but I shall be one very soon," said Margery placidly. "And I think I have changed my mind; I think I shall not care to be a society woman, only a thoroughly domestic one."
"Well, that's heaps better, but I don't see——" began Happie suspiciously. Then, interrupting herself, she said: "Tell me about the girls you met; you have not written much about them, and haven't said one word."
"I didn't make many acquaintances, Hapsie, dear," replied Margery. "Not as many as you would have done if you had not been such a dear, blessed, good girl as to let me go in your place. Oh, Happie, to think that I owe this lovely, lovely summer to you! I mean to be the best sister a girl ever had to pay you for it, or to pay you a little bit!"
"You needn't mind," said Happie rather ungraciously. "I was perfectly satisfied with you as you were. You seem away off, Margery. I don't know what it is, but I feel as if you were up on those mountain tops, where I couldn't touch you."
"You can touch me very well, you dear little Happie-goosie," said Margery, encircling her sister's head with her arms, and drawing it close to her as she bent over her. "It is the witchery of the sea that you feel, Hapsie; I haven't recovered from the effect of the mermaids' songs. I am glad our room looks towards those mountains," she added irrelevantly. "I shall sit here lots and lots to think, and to love them."
"Think! To moon and build castles, you mean, if you are going to look at them like that! Oh, Margery, have you come to the mooning age?" cried Happie shaking herself free of the encircling arms, and sitting erect to look into Margery's face.
Their mother entered as Happie made her protest, and looked sharply from one to the other of the girls, Happie, rumpled, flushed and vaguely worried, Margery fair, serene, smiling to herself in the moonlight. She caught her breath quickly, but only said, as she seated herself on the edge of the bed: "I think you said at tea that you had not seen much of Happie's friends, not even of Auntie Cam's Edith, Margery. I suppose they drifted into a younger set and amusements than yours. But did you find any girls of your own age that you liked? You have not told us much of your new friends."
"There were several nice girls there, mother. Two I liked very much," said Margery slowly.
"The two of whom you wrote us?" asked her mother. "Yet I haven't precisely a clear impression of them."
"No, mother; I wanted to tell you all about it when I came," said Margery. "One was a Boston girl, and the other from Baltimore. They were both nice; I saw a good deal of them, and we are going to keep up our friendship. But—I was going to tell you—the girl from Baltimore had a brother, six years older than I. He had had typhoid fever, so his vacation lasted all summer. They had a cottage—Auntie Cam knows them, and likes them all, very much. I think, perhaps, I saw more—or rather I was—I think the Baltimore girl's brother and I were more friendly, more congenial, don't you see? than even those two girls and I."
"It is pleasant to have a friend, older and wiser than oneself, little Margery," said her mother, feeling her way.
"Yes, that's just it!" cried Margery eagerly. "He was ever so much wiser than I, and so nice, mother! You will like him. We used to read together. Auntie Cam and his mother would sew, and it seemed as if he read to me chiefly—I don't mean that conceitedly, but it really did! And then he often took his mother, or Auntie Cam, or Mary, his sister, rowing, and I always was asked. He is nice, truly, mother. He has taught me a great deal. I feel sure you will like him."
"Am I likely to meet him, dear? Of course I should like any one deserving of such high praise, but Baltimore is not precisely in our neighborhood," suggested her mother.
"He will come to New York; he said he would not mind coming here, even in winter; he loves the country," cried Margery eagerly. Then stopped at a groan from Happie. "He asked if he might write to me—sometimes, you know, mother," Margery said slowly.
"Certainly, dear, if I may know how and what he writes you. I shall have to satisfy myself as to any new friend, that he is trustworthy, and appreciates my little Margery," said her mother.
"Oh, he is trustworthy, mother, and he does appreciate me!" cried Margery, so eagerly that the mother's sigh turned into a half laugh.
"Ah, well, dear, you shall not lose a friend, and you shall have the benefit of this wise and discerning Baltimore boy's letters, if they are not too frequent, and maintain his reputation for wisdom," the mother said rising. "But remember that you are a young girl still, little Margery, and that I was never willing that my children should play with other children until I knew them for the sort that I would choose for their associates. I am not less careful now, so I must wait before I fully endorse this new acquaintance."
Margery sprang to her feet and ran after her mother to kiss her good-night. It was with a special tenderness that Mrs. Scollard folded her in her arms.
"He is good, mother, and brave, and handsome and clever," whispered Margery.
"Yes, dear, yes. Good-night, my Margery, my little daughter. Sleep well, and remember that there is no friend like your mother, and that she is glad to get you back, and to keep you close," said Mrs. Scollard, whispering lest her voice might prove unsteady.
She found Miss Bradbury waiting her in her own room as she came in and closed the door. "Oh, Miss Keren, Miss Keren, our dove has flown back to the Ark, but she has brought with her the green branch to show that spring-time and blossom-time are at hand," she said, trying to smile through the tears on her cheeks.
"Well, my dear Charlotte, you would not have her flight over barren waters, would you? The spring-time is part of every year, little mother," said that wise woman.
Across the narrow entry Happie crept to bed at her sister's side, drawing up the sheet over her head to stifle her moan as she returned Margery's good-night kiss. "Oh, dear, oh, dear," she murmured burying her head in the pillow. "It's growing up—and worse! Oh, dear, oh, dear!"
Margery resumed her place in the household, falling into her housewifely ways with only a brief time allowance for getting out of the holiday spirit and into domestic harness. Indeed, she was more care-taking and pervading than ever, which proved that the growing-up process, which was going on so fast as to dismay her mother and Happie, was going on in the right way.
Margery's coming left Happie more free to enjoy herself, and she threw herself into the outdoor life with all the zest of the season. Long walks in the glory of wind and color of early autumn, chestnutting, wild grape gathering, these were the pleasures offered by the mountains now, and the children were half wild with this first taste of them. Happie yielded herself to the delight of them, as if the mountain winds were sweeping her through the weeks on their strong pinions. Lessons at home were begun, but Mrs. Scollard did not insist on much yet, reflecting that if they were to spend the winter in the Ark, close housed by snow and cold, the children would have enough of being shut up.
Margery did not often join the others on their rambles; she preferred solitary walks, and loved to sit with her mother sewing and talking in that sweet intimacy which dawns between a good mother and her daughter when the latter is growing up into a friend.
It somewhat reconciled Happie to the lack of Margery that Gretta had more time to go about with her than earlier in the season, when gardening and farming claimed her. Everything in her home was getting so unbearable to Gretta that she was thankful to escape to study and to roam with Happie. It was so apparent that her affairs were reaching a climax that was bound to end in a complete change, that there was less risk in taking comfort, since nothing could make her cousins more unkind to her.
"Eunice's cousin is going to teach the school this winter," said Gretta one afternoon. She spoke out of a long silence, and straightened herself painfully. She had been bending over a rock upon which she was cracking chestnuts with a smaller stone, she and Happie being alone out on the side of a hill upon which stood three noble chestnut trees, dropping their treasures lavishly for who would come to gather them.
"Eunice's cousin?" repeated Happie. Gretta and she always omitted Reba from allusions to home affairs, she being but Eunice's reflection. "What relation is she to you?"
"She isn't any relation to me; she's Eunice's second cousin on the other side—her mother's side," said Gretta. "Here are some big chestnuts! She's a young girl no older than we are, and if they don't have a poor school this winter it'll be queer! Why, she can't keep order any more!"
"Is she graduated as a teacher?" asked Happie, wondering.
"Mercy, no! She went to the Normal for one term down at Schultzburg, and she got a certificate, but she was there only one term. Why, she yet wears dresses only down to her insteps!" said Gretta.
"Is that the way they make teachers?" cried Happie. "Why, I never heard of such a thing!"
"That's the way," said Gretta nodding. "Sometimes we have a good school—we had a fine teacher three winters while I went—but we're more than likely to get some one who can't teach. This is a real nice girl—Hattie Franz is her name—but she isn't fit to teach school. You see, when she applied, the directors hired her because her father lives around here, and they all know him. There was a young man applied at the same time who really was a normal graduate, but Hattie got it because the directors wanted to favor her father."
"Well, of all things!" cried Happie with the scorn of her age for anything like personal favors, or political "pulls." "I don't consider that fair; the directors ought to do their duty and get the very best teacher they can. As if the children's education wasn't more important than pleasing some man who happened to be a neighbor! What makes the people stand such directors?"
"I guess because they're used to this way of doing things, partly, and partly because they want their children made teachers the same way when their turn comes," said Gretta, laughing at Happie's disgusted face. "You don't seem to know as much about meanness and folks' ways as I do; you must all be good and unselfish in New York."
"I suppose we aren't," began Happie slowly. And Gretta laughed again.
"But I'll tell you," Happie went on, rallying to her own defense. "We don't see the mean and wrong things as plainly as you do in the country. Our friends are nice and high-minded, and all that, and the other side doesn't get turned around. Here you know every single thing that people do wrong—almost what they think. Maybe this Hattie Franz will teach better than you think she will."
"Oh, I like her lots," said Gretta shaking her head positively, "but she won't do that. She's good-natured, and she's bright enough, but she's easy-going and sort of lazy-minded, and she couldn't make children behave, not one bit! They'll do just as they please; the little ones because she will hate to scold them, and the big ones because they are too much for her, and then the little ones will be worse than ever. I can see just how it will go!"
"What a pity——" began Happie, but Gretta interrupted her with an exclamation, turning to Happie with laughter flashing over all her face.
"Suppose we do see it, Happie!" she cried.
"See what? The school; visit it?" asked Happie.
Gretta nodded hard, and Happie began to protest that she would never dare do such a thing when Gretta cut her short.
"You don't know what I mean," she said. "I mean go just for fun, and all dressed up. We'll get the queerest clothes we can find, long skirts, bonnets, old-fashioned jackets, and thick veils. Then we'll go down to the schoolhouse and knock at the door. One of the children will open it, and we'll walk in. Hattie won't know you anyway, and I'll risk her finding out who I am till I'm ready to have her. I can imitate almost any voice I ever heard, and I'll talk Dutch so she won't ever guess who it is—you never heard me talk Dutch, did you? I can do it as well as any old woman in the county, and Hattie never'll guess until I slip out of the Pennsylvania Dutch into English and my own voice. I like Hattie and she likes me; she's full of fun, and she'll laugh herself nearly sick over us; she won't be one bit mad! Oh, come on, Happie; will you do it?"
"You don't think there would be any harm in it?" Happie hesitated, greatly tempted to say yes on the spot, for she dearly loved a frolic, and it had been long since she had had one.
"Of course it's no harm," said Gretta eagerly. "Nobody could object. Any one dare—no, any one may visit school; you say I must not say dare for may! We'll have a good laugh all around, and nobody be the worse for it. We'll go late, just before she closes, and I believe Hattie will be much obliged to us for cheering things up once! Why, what harm can a little frolic do?"
"I don't see, I'm sure," said Happie slowly. Then she dimpled and laughed, picturing to herself the funny effects she and Gretta would make in their costumes, sailing up the aisle of the little schoolhouse. "All right; I'll do it. When shall we go?" she added.
"Just as soon as we can get the things ready," cried Gretta gleefully. "The sooner the better. Eunice's attic is full of the queerest trash! You needn't bother to hunt up anything; I'll find enough for us both. To-morrow afternoon meet me over behind the mill at half-past two. You might bring some veils, and a looking-glass, but I know I can get everything else. Oh, say, Happie! Suppose we carry handbags, satchels, and fill them full of little bottles and jars, and tell Hattie we are selling stuff for the complexion! Paints and powders, and balm, and lotions, and hair dyes, and try to make her buy some! She's got about the reddest cheeks and nicest skin of any girl around here, and she isn't a minute over sixteen; don't you think it would be funny?"
"Perfectly beautiful!" cried Happie with a jump up and down, to and from the rock on which the chestnuts grew. "I'll bring the satchels, Gretta. It's going to be great!"
The two girls immediately set off for their homes full of this delightful plan. Happie poured forth the outlines of it the instant she got into the house. Bob petitioned to be allowed to see the girls after they were dressed, and Laura and Polly and Penny begged to accompany them. Mrs. Scollard was half afraid that they were going to make trouble, and she hesitated about letting Happie have the queer satchel which she meant to borrow from Rosie, but Happie assured her that Gretta knew, and Gretta said there could be no harm to the school in the visit, at the end of the day and that the young teacher would enjoy it as much as they did. Her mother was always in sympathy with innocent fun, so she consented to Happie's going, and having consented, looked as if she would like very much to join her.
"You see," Happie explained, "this is a girl of our own age, or about that, whom Gretta knows; it isn't like a stranger, or a full grown teacher! And won't it be funny to see us so solemn and dignified, and Gretta talking Dutch 'yet,' as they say up here, and the girl teacher not knowing her? And then to see her face when she finds us out?"
"It certainly will be very funny, and I really don't believe there can any harm come of it; it is only a prank," said Mrs. Scollard.
"That's all, you clear-sighted motherums!" cried Happie joyously. "And I may ask Rosie for her satchel?"
"I have another for Gretta, a queer-shaped affair that looks as if it came out of the original ark," said Miss Bradbury, whose pleasure in this proposed visit was refreshing to behold.
The next day Happie and Gretta met at the appointed place, each laden with the fantastic fruits of their gleaning. They began to dress with ecstatic giggles, each helping the other to assume incongruous garments of various sizes and dates. It was not long before the giggles gave place to peals of laughter until both girls got quite weak from mirth, and it was with the greatest difficulty that the toilets were completed.
Gretta wore a skirt of ante-bellum days. Its fulness hung many-folded around her tall figure, for lack of the hoops originally intended to set it out. Over this she wore a remarkably short bolero jacket of a not-much-more recent period; its rounding front and very abbreviated back revealed a striped waist of bulging fulness, fastened by black china buttons fully an inch and a half in diameter, decorated with bright pink roses and blue morning glories. Her thick dark hair Happie made into an immense knot half way up her head, twisted so tight that it stuck out "like a chopping block," Gretta herself said. This resolute-looking coiffure was surmounted by a broad-brimmed hat, trimmed with green ribbons and a band of black velvet, both much the worse for wear, while a discouraged feather drooped, guiltless of curl, over the brim on the left side.
Happie's costume expressed a more chastened spirit than Gretta's. Her skirt was as scant as Gretta's was full, and went off in a long train with narrow ruffles curving themselves into waves around the bottom. Its color was a faded brown. Over this hung a coat, apparently intended to go with the immense fulness of Gretta's skirt. It went out into deep plaits from each seam, and its sleeves might almost have made a jacket as large as Gretta's; full at the top were they, standing out in great plaits after the fashion of the time of its present wearer's birth. It had been a dark blue; it was still blue, in spots, but yellowish streaks ran down the folds of its many plaited skirt and sleeves, and its velvet collar was white along its edges. Happie's hat was a bonnet. It was straw, broad in the crown and narrow in the brim. Its trimming was a ribbon originally black, but now greenish; however, its bows drooped in a manner more mournful than any mere blackness could have made them. A bunch of perfectly straight thin ostrich feathers adorned this bonnet's front, while on the left a bouquet of faded violets, ranging from soiled white to dubious purple in color hung disconsolately by their untwisted green cambric stems. As a last touch, and in case they should remove the thick brown and dark blue veils which were to disguise them, the girls had wet red ribbon in ammonia and daubed their cheeks with it. The vivid crimson gave a lurid effect to their faces in spite of the fact that Happie's rippling hair had been forced into severe smoothness over each temple, and knotted low in her neck under her travesty of a bonnet, as near to the manner of a decorous old woman as such hair could be made to go.
As soon as they could tie the veils over their remarkable headgear, pull on their wrinkling gloves, and control their laughter sufficiently to walk straight, the girls started out across the fields and down the road towards the schoolhouse. It was encouraging that Jake Shale passed them with his slow team without recognizing them; they saw him turning around on his seat to look after them as long as they were in sight, wonder and speculation written on his usually impassive countenance—as well they might be.
Arrived at the schoolhouse they pulled themselves together, brought their satchels to the fore, and Gretta, saying with a sharp indrawing of her breath: "Now for it!" knocked on the door. It was opened by an exceedingly small boy in knickerbockers that had the effect of scallops, the legs were so short.
"Dare we see the teacher?" asked Gretta with so good a Pennsylvania Dutch accent that Happie's shoulders shook under their manifold plaits, and she nearly betrayed herself by an audible giggle.
The diminutive boy was not equal to meeting this demand upon him. He held the door and his mouth proportionately wide open and the two strange—and stranger—ladies stalked past him upon the startled vision of the girl teacher.
"Miss Franz, we come together to see your school once. This is my friend; I am myself. My friend, you dare sit down. Der teacher don't seem to know you dare, say not? But she is young yet; she will learn," said Gretta serenely, as she placed a chair for Happie, who dropped into it, while Gretta seated herself with much spreading of her voluminous skirts, and with many airs. The young teacher stood clutching her own chair by its back, turning fiery red and deadly pale by turns as her amazement and terror wrote themselves on her chubby face. It never occurred to her that she was the victim of a joke; she felt perfectly sure that these women were insane. She made up her mind on the spot that they had escaped from the distant insane asylum, and she found much comfort in remembering that her unruly eldest scholars were boys, and were far bigger and stronger than her callers.
"I sought you would like some zings for your face, teacher," said Gretta, opening her satchel. "We sells zings to make you pretty. Here is a bottle yet makes you lose all what sun does to you—freckles, und such a tan. Here is a little pot of stuff what makes you red in your cheeks; you like to be red und pretty, say not? What you want to buy, teacher?"
"Nothing at all," said Hattie Franz, feebly.
"Nosing!" exclaimed Gretta. "You wait once und see how pretty the girls gits yet, und you'll be sorry, I guess. You know that girl down to Neumanns'? She takes all I give her. Down in the city, folks uses such a stuff, and you'd ought to look nice like them city girls. Say not? No? Well, then! You go on mit your school, my good girl, und we'll wait a little to sell you zings." Gretta smoothed her ridiculously long-fingered gloves complacently, and bridled. Happie had not looked for such clever acting from quiet Gretta. "Leave me hear what you teaches deze little folks," she added.
Hattie Franz faced her pupils. "The third reader class may read," she said faintly. Six children came forward reluctantly, eyeing fearfully the veiled figures before them. "Read up loud once!" commanded Gretta sternly to the wavering line. "My friend is deeve!"
The "deeve" lady seemed to be variously afflicted, it struck the poor little teacher. In addition to her deafness she appeared to be subject to a nervous twitching; her shoulders shook, and the veil over her face trembled.
The third class in reading made a sorry showing. It is next to impossible to read when one is staring straight ahead, and this class could not get their eyes away from their visitors.
The visitor who did all the talking shook her head. "Does the directors know how bad they can't read?" demanded Gretta, varying the dialect for her own amusement. "When we was to school we could read more good when we was littler, say not?" she called loudly to her supposedly deaf companion. "Can they read Dutch yet?"
Hattie Franz shook her head. "We teach only English in the schools," she said, her voice shaking. "I guess they're scared."
"I guess," assented Gretta emphatically. "Und you too, you seem scared too yet! What fur a person do you guess I am? We won't eat you, little teacher!"
Hattie seemed less sure of that than she would like to be. She went down the aisle and whispered to one of the older girls.
"Yes, I'll go right off," the visitors heard her reply, and they guessed that frightened Hattie was dispatching her for aid.
"Sing for us once, little dears," said Gretta, having no mind to allow the aid to come. "Und you, you big girl gitting up dere, you sit down und sing mit der littlest ones. School ain't out yet!"
The big girl obediently dropped back into her seat, and Hattie quaveringly began the air of "Bring Back My Bonnie to Me," though she could not remember a word. The children joined in a very slender chorus. The girls on the platform were so uncomfortable that they decided to reveal themselves; with the thick veils over their faces and their rising laughter, they felt nearly on the verge of suffocation.
"Teacher, would you mind going down to the door once, and find my handkerchief for me? Maybe I dropped it coming up," said Gretta.
"Teacher" was only too glad of the chance to get away from the immediate neighborhood of her grotesque callers, of whose lunacy she became more convinced every moment. She hastened down the aisle, and nearly fainted as she heard the wild whoop which arose behind her, accompanied by thumpings and poundings on desks and floor. Apparently insanity was contagious, and the children were as mad as the visitors, from whom her one idea was to escape.
Seizing the last desk for support the little teacher forced herself to turn and face the danger, to discover the cause of this sudden pandemonium. Turning she rubbed her eyes to make sure that she saw aright. Or was it she, after all, who was crazy? There, still in their places on the platform, were the two women, still in their singular garb. But they had thrown back their veils, and poor little Hattie Franz saw, instead of the glaring eyes of the pair of lunatics which she felt sure had invaded her domain, the familiar dark eyes of Gretta Engel, flashing with mirth, and the laughing ones of the girl from New York, both dancing and sparkling at her above the crimson streaks which the ammonia-dipped ribbon had left upon their cheeks!
The older boys were shouting, pounding, cheering; the older girls shrieking with laughter, and the little children were pulling and pounding one another, screaming at the tops of their voices in the general excitement.
The relief of the reaction from her fright, the irresistible fun of the situation was too much for the pedagogic dignity of the sixteen-years-old teacher. She ran up the aisle as fast as her feet would carry her, seized Gretta by the shoulders and shook her as hard as a girl of five feet one can shake a girl of five feet six.
"Gretta Engel, you mean, mean, dreadful girl!" she cried vehemently. "I thought, of course, you were a lunatic, and I think so now more than ever!"
Gretta caught her breath, half choked between laughter and her shaking, and the school applauded, highly appreciating their teacher's energy, as well as her being fooled. "To think that you hadn't the least idea! You hadn't any idea, had you?" gasped Gretta.
Hattie Franz gave limp Gretta a few parting shakes, herself weak from laughter. "How could I have an idea?" she demanded. "My, but I was frightened! I'll pay you back for this trick, Gretta, if I have to wait till we are ninety-nine years old! How shall I ever get the school dismissed and these children in order?" she sighed.
Gretta turned to the pupils. "Young ladies and gentlemen," she began, and the shouting ceased; the children waited to see what more fun was coming. "You will please sing 'Marching Through Georgia,' and then all march yourselves home. Who locks up, Hattie?"
"Aaron Shale; he keeps the key and makes the fire," said Hattie.
"Then you let Aaron stay here, and slip away with us," said Gretta. "He'll close up." But she reckoned without her host—the host of children. The older ones stampeded after the teacher and her visitors, and formed into line, ready to escort them through the village. Up the road Gretta and Happie spied Bob and Laura, with Polly and Penny, waiting to see them pass.
The last thing that the girls wanted was to be turned into a sort of Antique and Horrible parade, like the children who masquerade in New York on Thanksgiving day. There was but one thing to be done, and that was to run for it, up the backwoods road, and across the fields. Hastily bidding Hattie good night, Gretta and Happie gathered their fantastic garb about them and fled with all their might. The last vestige of that afternoon's frolic to be seen was two veiled ladies in marvelous costume, fleeing at top speed towards the old grist mill.
None of "the Archaics" saw Gretta during the day that followed the visit to the school. On the second morning Miss Bradbury dispatched Mahlon—if a word suggesting speed may be used in connection with Mahlon's movements—down to the Neumanns' to purchase eggs. He was gone so long that his active wife, requiring the eggs for her morning baking, lost all patience waiting for him, threw her sunbonnet on her head, tied it with a snap of its starched strings that boded ill for Mahlon when she should have found him, and started down the road to bring eggs and delinquent husband home together at a quickstep.
It was so long before Rosie returned that the family really began to fear there was some serious reason for this second delay, when Rosie appeared, striding along at a tremendous pace. Mahlon loped after her at the respectful distance of five feet, with his usual effect of being about to go to pieces at all points at once.
"Thought I wa'n't never comin' back, I guess," said Rosie as she entered, setting down her basket of eggs with one hand, and jerking off her sunbonnet with the other. "I don't believe I kin git that there puddin' done fer dinner this day. But I had to stop and listen. There's great doin's down there to Neumanns'. Eunice's madder than I ever seen her. I guess she's makin' herself feel as mad as she kin; tryin' to make herself believe she's got an excuse fer puttin' Gretta out."
"Putting her out?" cried Happie. "You don't mean that literally?"
"Litterly or not," said Rosie, evidently in the dark as to the word, "I mean it fer the plain truth. I guess she's been plottin' some time back how to make a fuss over something and tell Gretta she won't keep her no longer. Now she's takin' your visit to the school, and your insult—so she calls it—to her teacher—her cousin, I mean the teacher—as a handle, and she says Gretta can't stay in her house after what she done."
"Why, Rosie!" cried Mrs. Scollard.
"It's jest as I say," Rosie asserted, as if her veracity were questioned. "Gretta feels dreadful, but it don't do no good fer her to tell 'em Hattie took it all right, and liked the fun, yet. Eunice says she's insulted her cousin and made a bad return fer all she's done fer her, and she won't keep her another day."
"But Rosie, there wasn't the slightest tinge of malice in it; it was only a girl's harmless prank played on—and at last with—another girl," protested Mrs. Scollard. Even Miss Bradbury sat erect in considerable excitement as she listened, while Margery and Happie looked aghast at this unexpected result of harmless fun.
"Why, I guess I know that!" cried Rosie. "Hattie's even been up there herself yet, and told Eunice she wasn't insulted—thought it was fun, but it didn't do no good. I tell you what it is—and Gretta's said this herself to me this good while back—Eunice Neumann's so mad to think the girl's havin' better times that it makes her crazy to do something, she don't know what. She's made up her mind either you've got to take Gretta and keep her, or let her to the miserable, lonely times she was havin' when Happie took a fancy to her. She's threatened Gretta more'n once to drop her and leave her fine friends look after her, if they think so much of her! Gretta's been awful worried fer fear Eunice'd say something to you yet. Poor girl, she hain't got much of her cousins into her; she's took all her ways from the other side and a sensible thing she did when she done it! But now Eunice's goin' to put her out and leave her set by the roadside till somebody picks her up. I guess she thinks you'll do it, and Gretta's sick, she's so ashamed, and hurt, and angry, and all sorts of ways to oncet."
"Poor little girl!" exclaimed Miss Bradbury, as Happie turned to her in mute appeal. "And for such a trifling pretext as that playful visit to the school! We agreed before you went that there was no chance of offending any one. Happie came home and reported that the little teacher thought it as good a joke as they did."
"Why, good gracious, hain't I said so?" cried Rosie. "And hain't Hattie herself said so, and to Eunice yet? It hain't nothin' in this world but an excuse; a poor excuse, says you, and I should say it was, and I guess Eunice knows it as well as either of us. She says 'twouldn't have been done if Hattie hadn't been her cousin—now did you ever hear tell of such nonsense? But nonsense or not, she says Gretta's got to go, and that's more'n nonsense. But you needn't worry about that, because it had got to come on some poor excuse or other, and I guess in the end she'll be better off without them cross women. Reba wouldn't be so bad, but she hain't got the backbone to stand up against Eunice; I guess she's about flaxed all the time herself, gettin' scolded."
"I suppose the only question is: What can be done about it?" suggested Margery timidly. For the first time she and Happie were painfully conscious that they were not in their own home. It would not do to ask Miss Bradbury to shelter another in the Ark; the suggestion must come from her.
At that moment Bob burst into the room. All the time that they had been listening to Rosie's tale, they had seen through the window Mahlon out in front talking to Bob with his usual accompaniment of swaying arm and leg, talking with so much earnestness that Mrs. Scollard had found time in the midst of her interest in Rosie's news to wonder what could be the matter with Mahlon.
"Mahlon's been telling me what's happened down at the Neumanns'," cried Bob excitedly. "Did you ever hear of such an outrageous piece of injustice? Say, shall I harness up, and go right down to fetch Gretta? Of course you're going to have her here, aren't you?"
Never before had Happie fully realized the inestimable advantage of being a boy who did not stop to consider delicate issues, but blurted out what he wanted to say, oblivious to consequences. And it was evidently not a case for hesitation, for Miss Bradbury promptly said: "Indeed I am!"
She got no further, for Happie hurled herself at her with such enthusiasm that though she was stoutly built, her Aunt Keren staggered backward under the onslaught, fell against Mrs. Scollard, standing close behind her, and all three, Miss Bradbury, Mrs. Scollard and Happie went down in a heap on the floor, to the consternation of Polly, looking on, and the unbounded joy of Penny, who jumped up and down on the sofa where she was playing, clapping her hands and shouting till Jeunesse Dorée leaped from his pleasant doze, swelling up to four times his natural size.
"Oh, Happie," gasped Miss Bradbury struggling to her feet. "Do be careful. You certainly are growing much bigger."
"Say, Happie, you want to look out how you let yourself go," protested Bob, helping his adopted aunt to her feet, with a hand for his mother, who was laughing too heartily to rise unaided.
"Oh, I beg your pardon, dear Auntie Keren!" cried Happie with as much contrition as was compatible with amusement. "You're not hurt, are you? Nor motherums?"
"Only in my dignity," said philosophical Miss Bradbury getting up. "And I am less flexible than some years ago."
"I'm injured in the same way; in my dignity only. It is not seemly that the mother of six children should be bowled over like a nine-pin," said Mrs. Scollard, settling the hairpins which were starting out on all sides of her tumbled hair.
"I never saw any one so fitted to be the mother of sixty as you are!" cried Happie with conviction. "You keep us in order—we're the best children in the world, of course!—and yet you are just as young as we are, and you never misunderstand! And Aunt Keren is so dear! I didn't mean to bowl you over, you two blessed treasures, but Aunt Keren was such a darling to say: 'Indeed I am!' so promptly, as if there weren't the least possibility of doing anything else but take in Gretta that I couldn't help flying at her! And I really think, Aunt Keren, you must have been standing rather shakily!"
"I am willing to admit resting more weight on one foot than on the other," returned Miss Bradbury. "Do I gather from your words and your movements, your calm and deliberate movements, that you are willing to shelter Gretta, now that she is abandoned?"
"Oh, Aunt Keren!" was all that Happie said, but it seemed a satisfactory reply, for Miss Bradbury warmly returned the kiss that Happie gave her, and went to her desk.
"I think the best way to arrange it is to accept Bob's offer to go after Gretta himself," she said. "If I go I shall subject myself to all sorts of disagreeable remarks. Margery cannot, and certainly her mother must not go to be railed at, while Happie might possibly be led to air her opinion of Miss Neumann's behavior, which would never do at all. So I'll write a note to Gretta, Bob, and you can take it, and if Rosie is right that matters are so bad with the poor child you will bring her home with you."
"Well, I guess!" ejaculated Rosie. "I hain't told you half of how bad they are. I hain't told you one word of what Eunice said."
"Better not. It would be disagreeable and useless hearing," said Miss Bradbury as she drew her paper towards her, glanced at the calendar, and dipped her pen in the ink to begin a note to Gretta.
In a few moments she blotted the note and turned to read it to the assembled family; Bob had already departed for the barn to make Don Dolor ready.
"My dear Gretta," Miss Bradbury read, "Rosie has come back with the story of your wrongs. I am sorry, my dear girl, that you should be unkindly and unjustly treated, for your sake. But for our own I am tempted to be glad of that which gives me the opportunity to say that you must come at once to us, to stay with us, either here or in town, until you have found somewhere else where you can be happier. But I am sure that you cannot soon find friends who will love you better than we do, nor be more glad of the chance to have you all to themselves, and all the time, than we are. The girls are beside themselves at the thought of your coming, not to go away again for nobody knows how long! Come back with Bob; do not keep us waiting. We have long wished that we might have you, so come at once to
Your loving friends (represented by)
Keren-happuch Bradbury."
"Just the very sort of note to write Gretta, Aunt Keren!" cried Happie flying to hug her again in a rapture, while Margery said, with more quiet pleasure: "I am sure that will not only bring her, but set at rest any doubt she may have of being welcome."
"It is so simple and earnest that she can't fail to understand it, and be comforted," said Mrs. Scollard, as Miss Keren-happuch went out to give the note to Bob, with a few last hints as to how to bear himself, and what to say and to leave unsaid at the seat of war. "I suppose we must get ready that little room, Miss Keren? Shall I see to it?"
"Yes," Miss Keren called back, answering both questions at once.
"There never was, there never could be another such mother as ours!" cried Happie, as her mother followed Miss Keren-happuch from the room. "Even if that Baltimore creature you met at Bar Harbor"—Happie could not bring herself to speak respectfully of the new friend, whose interest in Margery she found hard to forgive—"even if he is nice you couldn't like him better than such a mother, now could you, Margery?"
"No, indeed!" cried Margery, so heartily that Happie was pacified. She knew from stories, as well as Scripture, that when there was danger of losing beloved sisters through the coming of charming young men, the interlopers were preferred to all else—evidently Margery was safe, at least for the present.
In great excitement the family watched Bob driving out of the gate on his errand. Although Gretta ran in and out of the house daily, it was another matter to expect her coming on an indefinite visit, in the rôle of a homeless girl coming to them for shelter and protection. It was this thought that sent Margery and Happie from the window and up-stairs with shining eyes and quickened breath to help make ready for Gretta's reception.
The Ark was not a large house; it was already severely taxed to shelter its inmates, and it was something of a problem to know where to put Gretta.
Good Rosie postponed her dinner to combine it with her tea, and fell to cleaning a tiny room, which had been roughly finished, over the storage room back of the kitchen. It had never been plastered, but it was not an unpleasant little nook "when the dust of ages and of departed Bittenbenders had been cleaned away," Happie said, letting in the southern sunshine, which it faced.
There was an unused iron bedstead among the importations from town; this was brought forth for Gretta's use, and Margery and Happie went about gleaning here and there a table, a chair, a dresser, until they had rather more than the little room would hold, and no one the poorer to all appearances.
There was no more than time for Rosie to get the room swept, the floor scrubbed, and the windows cleared of their crust of dusty cobwebs before Don Dolor appeared trotting up the road, and Miss Bradbury and Mrs. Scollard headed the group of girls who ran down-stairs to be ready to welcome Gretta.
The poor girl needed a cheering greeting. She stepped out of the carriage, her face swollen out of all semblance to its pretty self, and broke into sobbing afresh as Miss Bradbury took her in her arms, with a tenderness none who did not know her well would have looked for in that brisk lady. Mrs. Scollard kissed the girl with her own motherliness, which was so beautiful to Gretta, who had never known a mother. Happie seized her next in one of the warmest of hugs, her bright bronze hair getting mixed up with her kisses in a way it had, and which always made Gretta laugh. She smiled now, a watery smile, and received Margery's loving welcome as cordially as it was given; Gretta looked up to gentle Margery as to a superior being.