"If you knew how glad we all are to get you here, Gretta, my duck, you'd suspect us of bribing Eunice to treat you as she has. But really and truly we're not guilty of setting her up to this meanness, though it is such a lucky thing for us," said Happie, folding her arm around Gretta, and conducting her into the house. Gretta actually leaned on Happie for support; she was so spent with tempestuous crying that there was little of her own fine vigor left upon which to lean.
Happie led her into the dining-room, and set her in the rocking-chair by the window. Then she took off Gretta's hat, while Margery went to get the coffee which was waiting, ready and hot, on the stove. They were all shocked by the tragic expression of Gretta's face, and the mark of suffering which the past forty-eight hours had set upon it.
"Suppose I hadn't you?" whispered Gretta, leaning back upon Happie as if utterly weary.
"I can't suppose anything of the sort; you belong to us. I knew you were mine the moment I saw you painting that fence last spring," said Happie, stroking the dark hair with a warm, clinging hand.
Gretta drank her coffee and felt better for it, the first food that she had tasted that day. Then Happie took her up to her own and Margery's room and got her to lie down beside her on the bed. There the view of the mountains which she loved would assure the girl so suddenly deprived of the only home which she had known, that not only her new friends, but the dearest of her old ones were left to guard her. For in her short life there had been nothing so dear to Gretta as the beautiful country in which she was born.
Wise Happie did not let Gretta talk. She lay beside her, still stroking her hair and crooning low a song that Gretta loved. And Gretta was too spent to try to talk, too hurt to have any desire to repeat the unkind things which had been said to her during that cruel day, and its preceding night. She held Happie's other hand tight in both of hers and laid her burning cheek upon it. And before long sleep came to begin the blessed work of Gretta's comforting and her establishment in a happier life.
The good friends who had taken Gretta into their hearts and home skilfully let her slip into the changed order of things as easily as possible. They learned from Bob what sort of an interview he had had with Eunice Neumann when he came to carry off Gretta. Bob said that "Rosie's account of things was not a patch on the reality, because no white man could imagine a woman cutting up as Gretta's cousin had." So Gretta was not encouraged to give details of her expulsion; instead "the Archaics" cheerfully set their wits to work to devise means to help her forget what was, after all, unforgettable. The furnishing of her little room proved to be the best distraction for Gretta. Bob drove her down, with Margery, Happie and Laura, to buy silkaline for her curtains, and they came back with "as pretty a pattern as they could have found in New York," Margery triumphantly announced on their return.
The girls made this silkaline into short curtains and ruffled chair cushions for Gretta's room, and flounced a packing-case with it for her dresser, it having been discovered that the dresser which they had selected for Gretta's use was Miss Bradbury's reserve storehouse, for special supplies.
Bob plastered the walls roughly, in which Gretta rendered so efficient help that once more Bob's opinion of her rose a notch. She could plaster better than he could! "And no wonder," Gretta declared, "after the plastering and kalsomining I've had to help with at Eunice's!"
When the walls were covered with the rough plaster, Bob and Gretta tinted them with colored kalsomine, a soft green that was really artistic. Against this wall the pretty green silkaline, with its brown chestnut burr pattern, swung so harmoniously that Gretta pranced up and down for joy as she fell back to see the effect, and Happie took a header into the snowy white little enameled bed to give vent to her satisfaction.
"'He took the animals two by two,'" chanted Bob. "We'll have to make new verses for our Ark, Hapsie; we catch our animals singly."
"Am I an animal?" asked Gretta, opening her eyes at him in pretended offense.
"All human beings are animals, Miss Gretta," said Bob. "It rests solely with yourself whether you will be a beast."
"I think I like some beasts better than human beings," Gretta began, but got no further, for Happie sat up and began saying: "Gretta, better, debtor, getter—get her—letter, met her—oh, yes! Wetter! I've got it. Listen, Bob!"
Bob refused to listen. Instead he said: "For pity's sake, Happie, don't spring anything on us made of such rhymes as those samples! Only a Boston girl, with all her r's turned into h's, would rhyme better and letter and wetter with Gretta."
"I think it would be nice to write a real poem on Gretta's flying to the ark for refuge," said Laura, surveying the improvements in the room from the doorway with lofty approval.
Gretta turned a beaming face upon Margery, Bob and Happie. "I never had such a bright, pretty room before," she cried, "Eunice never did anything except for plain, horrid, sensible use. I sometimes felt as if I should go crazy if I couldn't have something that was no good but to be pretty. And now look at this room! Oh, you good, dear people! I'm so thankful, and I'm beginning to be so happy! I never was happy in all my life, except for little minutes, out of doors. Do you suppose the animals were glad that there was a flood that drove them into the ark? For this animal is glad enough to be in this Ark!"
Miss Bradbury kept talking of returning to town, but still she lingered in the Ark. Mrs. Scollard was not well enough to resume her position in the city, and stayed on with her family at Crestville, her recovery retarded by her anxiety as to the next move, and by her unwillingness to continue to accept the kindness which Miss Bradbury truthfully assured her was for her hostess an economy over city expenditures. For though this were true, Miss Bradbury could not continue to carry an entire family on her shoulders, however broad they were, or however light their burden. In the meantime nothing changed in the arrangements at the Ark through the golden days of October, and, as if they had waited for Gretta to be safely harbored in her ark of refuge, the storms of winter set in prematurely in November, and with remarkable vigor.
The old house must have wondered at the way its new inmates set up stoves in every room where there was a chimney, and then drove them to their utmost. It had been accustomed only to a fire in the kitchen and in "the room." Gretta and Rosie seemed to have difficulty in adjusting their minds to this excess in the use of coal.
In the middle of November the first snow-storm of the year arrived untimely. It drifted to the height of a man's knee, and the thermometer dropped down past the naught on its register, down four more degrees. Of course such weather could not last, so early in the season; it was followed by a swift ascent of the thermometer, and the snow melted away faster than it had come. But while it lasted, it was an excellent imitation of winter, and not a little dismaying to novices in the art of living in the country.
The storm began on Friday; Don Dolor came up from the post-office with his back white with snow, and his long mane and tail balled with it. On Saturday the drifting snow lay over the Ark and its grounds and out-buildings like a beautiful blanket, and it was still falling. There was no denying that it was beautiful, but there was no denying either that it made the present world seem very solitary, and the outside world very distant and inaccessible.
The silence seemed like something tangible; as if one might take it by its corners and lift it up—only there was not precisely the right person to lift it. The licking of the little tongues of flame on the hearth fell curiously on Mrs. Scollard's ears, as if they should have been louder, but were muffled. The children's voices came down to her from above stairs loud and cheerful, but unreal, and through and above their ringing, she seemed to hear the silence of the snow-enveloped country.
Happie wandered restlessly into the room and threw herself into a chair with a movement most unlike her cheery, quick self.
"I feel suffocated, motherums," she said. "It's so still, so benumbed still, that I can hear the distant planets roll—hear them better than this one, for that matter; this one seems to be motionless."
"Make your own sounds, Happie," suggested her mother, not admitting to sharing her feeling. "Sing and shout; get the others to help you. What you have just said has a note of loneliness."
"I'm not so much lonely as lost, queer, restless," returned Happie. "And as to making sounds for ourselves, it's of no use. We've been trying it, but the more we sing, and laugh, and chatter, the more we hear the stillness of the earth. Gretta doesn't mind, because she's used to it, but Margery and I, and Laura, and even Polly a wee bit, are ready to fly into inch pieces."
"I prefer you whole," said her mother. "We shall have to devise something pleasant to do. You don't make fudge as often as you used to make it in town; would fudge be a solution?"
Happie shook her head with unmistakable emphasis. "I shouldn't like a solution of fudge, motherums," she said. "And it wouldn't be a solution of our troubles. Especially that there isn't any trouble," added Happie, rallying in an attempt at her usual cheerfulness. "I'll go back to the others and see if we can't think up something so interesting that we can drown out that no-sounding loud silence."
"Reading aloud?" suggested Mrs. Scollard, as Happie rose lazily and turned towards the door.
Happie turned back. "Now, motherums," she said reproachfully; "on such day as this we couldn't hear the most interesting story that was ever written; the silence would drown it. I wonder what can be the matter? I never noticed such a—such an audible silence, and it isn't like me to be so good-for-nothing, and restless."
"It is our first experience of a snow-storm in the country, and I suspect loneliness is at the bottom of your restlessness, dear Happie," said her mother. "I hope you'll find a weapon to rout your enemies, the silence and the loneliness, though you won't own up to the latter, my Happiness." And Mrs. Scollard waved a tiny farewell to her daughter, with more cheerfulness of manner than of heart.
"We're going to prowl, Hapsie," announced Bob, as Happie came back to her own room, where the clan of Scollard had assembled.
"To prowl? Where? We haven't any snow-shoes," said Happie.
"We don't need them in the attic, and that's where we're going to prowl. We thought we would go up there and see how it seems with the roof snow-padded," returned Bob.
"I imagine it will seem cold," said Happie. "However, I'm ready. There seems to be nothing better to do this morning."
"Penny and I are going down to get mama to read to us," said Polly. "Penny'll get cold up there, and we're going to ask mama——"
"To read 'bout the kitten that went walking all by himself, waving his wild tail!" cried Penny, interrupting joyfully.
The two younger children went away, Polly carrying under her arm a very shabby copy of "The Just So Stories." The four elder ones, with Gretta, climbed the attic stairs, the chill of the snowy air striking sharp upon their faces as they ascended.
"I wish I had had this place while I was still young enough to play Robber Baron! We never had such a dandy lair as this would have made, did we, Happie?" said Bob looking about him with an interest that suggested that he might still have enjoyed childish things if the dignity of sixteen years had not forbidden them.
"We never had anything that was a patch on this attic," said Happie sympathetically. "The only mystery we could get into our lairs was imaginary. Do you remember how we used to pretend that the playroom was so dark we couldn't see to walk in it, Bob?"
"Yes, and how we used to hold up the yardstick and father's cane for torches when our men came back from their raids?" added Bob.
"Of course, and how much we used to wish that we could get Margery to be the men, but she never would be, and we had to get on with imaginary followers. Though Margery could pretend she was the old witch woman that stayed in the cave and got the dinner, but Laura couldn't help one bit. She had to stop and argue that a chair was a chair, when we were pretending it was a turret of a castle," said Happie, brightening very much under these reminiscences.
"It was so stupid," said Laura decidedly. "I never could see anything in playing Robber Baron."
"Well, we did," sighed Happie. "This certainly would have made a perfectly lovely lair, Bob. It is too bad we didn't get it in time. No city child has an attic, and attics are made for children. In town houses there is nothing but an upper floor, with one room kept for a storeroom; in Patty-Pans flats there isn't so much as that!"
"We might turn the attic to another use to-day," said Margery. "We might each tell a story about it, and what we think may have happened in it during all the years that the house has stood. There is that Bittenbender trunk under the eaves; that would be a good subject for a story."
"Oh, that Bittenbender trunk!" cried Happie, starting into sudden animation. "I had forgotten all about it. We never have opened it. To-day would be the very day to see what is in it. Here is Gretta, living with us, and she is as near to being a representative of the Bittenbenders as Crestville boasts. Let's open it, now, this minute, and solve the mystery, instead of weaving yarns about it. Maybe we'll find some dark secrets hidden in its depths."
"Some dark clothes, much moth-eaten, more likely," said Bob. "But I'm with you for the opening. The late Mr. Bittenbender announces his early winter opening—so does Crestville to-day, for that matter! Say, Gretta, he is 'the late,' isn't he?"
"What is?" asked Gretta, puzzled into a relapse into the vernacular.
"The late; he is dead, isn't he?" asked Bob.
"Oh, yes; of course he is," said Gretta. "He died three or four years ago somewhere down country where he came from in the first place."
"Well, from all accounts of him, that seems to be a good thing," said Bob cheerfully. "Wouldn't you like to open that trunk and see what your grandfather-in-law—no, your step-grandfather left behind in that venerable, partly bald receptacle?"
"I don't mind; yes, I should like to open it," said Gretta, "but I think we ought to speak to Miss Bradbury first."
"Aunt Keren won't object, but of course you're right; we should have to ask her," said Happie. "Bob, suppose you go down and get all the trunk keys there are in the house, and bring up the hammer and chisel in case none works, and at the same time ask Aunt Keren's permission to break and enter?"
"Neat way of making sure you don't have to go yourself. I see through your dark wiles, Miss Keren-happuch," said Bob. "But I don't mind; I'm public spirited; ready to be butchered to make a Roman holiday."
And Bob departed, whistling in a way that declared that for him the loneliness of the morning had been dissipated. He came back bearing a quantity of keys, the hammer and chisel, and Miss Bradbury's permission to investigate the Bittenbender trunk. He and Gretta dragged it forth from its long established retreat under the eaves, into the light of one of the four gable windows. Here the poor thing looked even shabbier than in the shadow, and smaller.
"It seems to be shrinking from the garish light of day," suggested Happie.
"You can hardly blame it," said Bob. "It is a melancholy trunk. I never saw anything else so bald as it is in spots. It ought to have a skullcap, or we might throw a buffalo robe over it—it might think its own hair had grown out again."
"You're as silly as I am, Bobby," said Happie approvingly, as she tried first one, then another of the keys without any result. "I thought it would open like—like sesame! But it doesn't seem so easy, after all."
"It looks as if a door-key would be about the right thing," said Bob, kneeling to squint into the lock. "Let me try it. I don't like to force the poor old thing; time has been hard enough on it without our being violent. I'll try this key, and if everything else fails, I believe wire will do the trick, for it is far from a Yale lock." Everything else did fail, so Bob twisted a wire and picked the lock, "in a manner worthy the Robber Baron," Happie said.
Bob threw back the lid impressively. "Behold the treasures of The Last of the Bittenbenders!" he cried melodramatically, stepping back a pace.
The girls crowded around to see what was revealed, Laura shivering with the combination of cold and excitement.
"Let Gretta take out the contents," said Happie. "We must do everything decently and in order, and we mustn't forget that she is the most in order of any of us. When it comes to Bittenbender things, she's the family representative."
"I won't be jealous of any one who wants that place," laughed Gretta, kneeling before the trunk nevertheless. "I'm not anxious to be mixed up with the Bittenbenders; they are not one bit relation to me, I'm proud to say."
"Never mind genealogy just now, Gretta; show us what's in the trunk. If Happie says you must, you must—her word is always law somehow," said Bob.
"Because her words are Happie-thought words," smiled Margery.
"THE GIRLS CROWDED AROUND TO SEE WHAT WAS REVEALED"
Gretta began to deposit on the floor the top layer of the contents of the trunk. There was nothing interesting to the eager on-lookers, and everything had a dusty, musty smell, "as if spiders had wrapped them up in their webs instead of moth balls," Margery suggested. There were queer old garments, not valuable when they were new, and far from new when they were packed away. There were old account books which none but the accountant could have understood; some old newspapers, yellow and stained, and at the bottom more newspapers, but these bore dates several years subsequent to the papers on top, or the dates revealed by the garments.
"There isn't anything wildly exciting about this," said Bob wearily. "And I'm getting chilled to my marrow up here. Queer the newer papers are below; they must have repacked this thing. Why what's the matter, Gretta? What's up?"
He spoke sharply, and dropped on his knees beside the girl to look over her shoulder. Gretta was sitting back on her heels, holding a long, yellowed envelope in her hand at which she was gazing with all color fled from her frightened face.
"'The Last Will and Testament of Anna Bittenbender,'" read Bob, aloud. "Good gracious, Gretta, has it been found at last? And right here in the house? Open it, quick!"
"I can't," said Gretta, holding out the envelope to Happie as if it had been a dynamite bomb. "You read it, Happie."
Happie took the envelope eagerly, and drew forth from it a sheet of foolscap, covered with clear writing, very different from the inscription on the envelope.
"'I, Anna Bittenbender, born Neumann, and subsequently wife to Herman Engel, now the wife of Isaac Bittenbender, being of sound mind——' Why, Gretta, is it—it is actually your grandmother's will!" cried Happie, breaking off short in her reading, greatly excited.
"No doubt of that!" cried Bob, not less excited, while Margery and Laura mounted the fateful trunk, the better to look over Happie's shoulder. "Hurry up, Hap! She gives and bequeaths, of course. What does she give and bequeath—to whom?"
"I can't tell, you fluster me so!" gasped Happie. "Here are some small items. Here is a hundred dollars to her husband—oh, my! That's only to bury her! And here—— Yes, it is! 'I give and bequeath to my son Rufus Engel the house and farm in and on which I now live, consisting of sixty acres of cleared and wooded land, situated on the main road running from Crestville to Sprucetown, in the county of Madison, in the state of Pennsylvania, together with all the live stock which may be on the farm, and all the tools, vehicles and furniture in the house and farm buildings at the time of my death. In the event of the death of my son, the farm with all its appointments, as above named, shall pass to my son's only child, his daughter Gretchen Elizabeth, for her use and behoof, and for her heirs after her, without restriction and forever.'"
Happie ceased reading, and the will fluttered from her hand. She looked shocked; indeed all the young people gazed on one another blankly, utterly dazed. Gretta began to cry softly, and this brought the Scollards to their senses.
"Then the Ark is yours, Gretta," said Bob. "It is fine! Instead of Aunt Keren's sheltering you, you are sheltering all of us. You will let us stay on a while, won't you?"
"Don't!" cried Gretta, hysterically.
"Come down to mother. We must tell mother," said Margery. "And we must find Aunt Keren. Pray don't cry, Gretta. It is the loveliest thing that could have happened to you; you will be perfectly happy when you have got used to it, and realize that you own a farm. And, though we have always supposed that Aunt Keren was not at all rich—only comfortably off, she didn't seem to dread giving up this place if she had found the will. Come down-stairs as quick as you can."
But in spite of her cheerful words, Margery's mind was divided between rejoicing for Gretta, and regret for kind Aunt Keren's loss.
Without a second thought for the contents of the shabby little trunk which had so long guarded its secret till this day of dramatic revelation, the Scollards escorted Gretta down-stairs, Laura's tears falling as fast as Gretta's had. Laura had never quite liked accepting the country girl on equal terms with themselves, and she had been building air castles of succeeding summers spent at the Ark, with Aunt Keren. Laura was instinctively selfish; it always took much effort to get her up to the point of rejoicing in another's good.
"Aunt Keren, would you please come into the library where mother is?" said Margery looking in at Miss Bradbury busied with accounts at the dining-room table. "We have something wonderful to tell you."
Miss Bradbury looked up, with considerable doubt as to the importance of the communication that she was to hear. A glance at Margery's face convinced her that something serious had happened, and she followed the young people into the library at once. Mrs. Scollard lifted her face as the five entered, followed by Miss Bradbury. Polly sat on the arm of her mother's chair, Penny was curled within its embrace; it was a pretty and peaceful picture which they had come to break up.
Mrs. Scollard greeted them with her bright welcoming smile, but it faded instantly, her book fell from her hand, she set Penny on her feet and sprang to her own, crying: "My dears, what has happened?"
"We opened the trunk, Aunt Keren, mother," said Bob, making himself spokesman. "It had a lot of trash in it, but it had something else besides. We have found Gretta's grandmother's will!"
"Her will!" cried Mrs. Scollard. And with an instant perception of the truth, Miss Bradbury added: "And she has left this farm to Gretta; her husband hid the will!"
"Well, of course we can't tell about that," said Bob. "But yet it must have been so. The will was under a lot of old account-books, clothes and stuff belonging to old Bittenbender. It gives this place to Mrs. Bittenbender's son, Rufus Engel, and if he died, to his daughter Gretta."
"Oh, I'm so sorry!" cried Gretta, throwing herself face downward on the couch. "After you've been so good to me! But maybe it won't matter. We won't tell any one we found the old will, and then you can keep the Ark!"
Miss Bradbury laughed. "My dear little girl, would you have me compound a felony?" she asked, going over to stroke Gretta's hair. "Look up, my dear Gretta, and let me see you as glad as you should be! No longer a homeless girl, dependent on the grudging kindness of distant kindred, but an heiress, as things go in the country; the owner of an excellent farm. As for me, you know how hard I tried to find this will, and how glad I am to have justice done you. Fancy hiding the will! Why, this old man your grandmother married was a rare old scamp, and would you have me as bad as he was? We'll hasten to prove the will, get it through probate, and establish our Gretta in her rights just as fast as the law can move. Don't feel sorry, Gretta, my dear! I am very glad, and can get on perfectly well without the Ark. How much good has it done me since I took it until this summer? Isn't it a good joke on us all that the will was reposing quietly in our attic all the time that we were scouring the country for a trace of it?"
Gretta sat up flushed and purpling with excitement, her eyes burning, her breath coming short. "I'll never take the Ark, never, unless you don't want it!" she cried. "And I'll never take it then unless you will promise to own it with me and stay here all the time, and let me work for you. I won't touch the will, nor the place, unless you own it just as much as I do."
"My dear, grateful, generous Gretta," said Miss Bradbury, "did you ever hear that Shakespeare said that some people had greatness thrust upon them? You can't escape your good fortune in this world any more than your bad luck. I did not intend staying here all the time, you know, even when I owned the farm. But we'll promise that the Ark shall be our refuge when we need one, just as it was your refuge in time of trouble when I owned it. And who knows what good may be in store for us, as well as you? Good and bad happenings seem to run in schools, like mackerel, I have noticed."
"I feel exactly as if I were in a story-book," said Happie. "Hidden wills and tardy justice done the heroine, who has been poor and oppressed—now isn't it a regular fairy-tale?"
"It is very interesting," said Laura, so pensively that they all laughed, even Gretta.
"It is the very best thing that could have happened," declared Mrs. Scollard heartily, with an eye on Gretta's still clouded face. "It will turn this dreary day into summer sunshine. Come, let us tell Rosie; she will be delighted too."
But the dear woman could not quite forget that, though she was impatient to remove her children from dependence on Miss Keren, for the time they had no other home than the Ark. And it was a good home, however forlorn it had appeared at first. This discovery would have a decided, though indirect effect on her family fortunes.
"Well!" said Rosie when she heard the great news. "Well, if that hain't just like all I ever heard 'em tell of old Bittenbender! To go and hide the will, and then let it in a place where 'twould be sure to be found by whoever come here after him, so they'd have to stand the loss, or else be a big rascal like he was! I always heard 'em say old Bittenbender was the greatest scamp around here, but to hide the will, and then give the place he didn't own to pay his debt, and then let the will behind him, yet, where you'd be sure to find it, beats everything I ever heard."
"It looks as if the late unlamented Isaac Bittenbender enjoyed a joke of his own kind, though it isn't the sort to please all tastes in jokes," remarked Bob. "It is lucky for him that the will wasn't found while he still lived—it might have given him another sort of residence than the Ark."
"Well, it's a lucky thing for Gretta the farm come into honest hands, or the folks that found the will might have kept still about it and she'd never have been no wiser," remarked Rosie. "As 'tis, what you goin' to do about it?"
"Not that," said Laura, unnecessarily. "Don't you know, Rosie, how hard Aunt Keren tried to find the will, so she could give the place over to Gretta?"
"Why, you don't suppose I thought your Aunt Keren was a-goin' to keep it?" Rosie expostulated.
"We are going to have the will proved, admitted to probate, and we shall install Gretta as mistress of the Ark just as soon as we can possibly do so," said Miss Bradbury, smiling into Gretta's perturbed face. "Then we shall see what arrangement we can make with the owner by which we can stay on here for a time, instead of her living with us, but otherwise with no change of conditions. Did you ever see a girl so cast down by good fortune? Gretta, girl, pray look cheerful! Gaze out of the window at your own broad, snow-clad fields. Look around you at your own walls, and consider what a happy change this makes in the fortunes of a girl who has had nothing in all her life to call her own, not even a father's house! And now she is an independent farmer who, with a little help, can subsist off of her own good acres!"
"I wish it could stay yours, and you would let me live with you; it is dreadful to take anything from you when you have given me so much," repeated Gretta, unable yet to take any view of the morning's events except as they affected her friends.
It was impossible, however, not to feel some little thrills of pleasure as the idea of ownership became more familiar.
The snow of that Saturday went off like the mists of a July morning. On Monday the Scollards rejoiced in a premature sleigh-ride, though the drifts made some of the exposed points of the roads nearly impassable. On Tuesday the same roads were running with rivulets of water, and either sleighing or wheeling was nearly impossible.
Gretta's distress at being an heiress went through nearly the same process as the snow. Under the sunshine of Miss Bradbury and the Scollards' unselfish pleasure in her good, she began to brighten. Then she began to take pleasure in the thought that she could actually benefit them and shelter them under her roof, giving as well as receiving. It never occurred to any of them that they should separate, and in that case what did it matter, after all, in whose name the farm stood? It was and still should be, Gretta's home and that of its new inmates. It was a beautiful thing—provided no one else were the worse for it—that by her grandmother's will the old house had fallen to her grandchild, and that now Gretta Engel had a place, a holding in the county, and could take her position among her neighbors, no longer an object of charity. For even Miss Bradbury's, and the Scollards' charity—though it was of the sort meant by the strict meaning of the word—was a burden, lighten it as they would.
Mrs. Scollard was so much better that it was hard not to be quite as well as before she broke down, and to know that she was not equal to assuming the duties of her former clerkship. She talked a great deal with her older children as to their next move. The Ark had been a rest; it had saved her, but obviously they could not live on in dependence forever; there must be some way found to resume their independent existence. Bob could go back at any moment to Mr. Felton, but the five dollars a week at which he must begin would not support six people—even youngsters' sanguine views of practical questions had to admit that fact.
Margery, Happie and Gretta had a plan; they spent hours discussing it, but nobody yet knew what it was. In the meantime Mrs. Scollard cudgeled her brains by day—and by night too, to her own harm—trying to think of some way out of her troubles.
So when Bob drove up from the post-office on a day a little past the middle of November with a letter among her mail from the firm for which she had so long been confidential correspondent, Mrs. Scollard tore it open eagerly, and gave a queer little sob of joy as she laid it down after reading it.
"Oh, dear Miss Keren, do listen to this!" she said. "They ask me to come back if I am at all able, to take charge again of their foreign correspondence. And they say if I am not equal to resuming fully my old duties, at least to come to assume general supervision of that department at a smaller salary, if the work must be divided. They beg me to take my old position at fifty dollars a week, as before, or to take half the work at twenty-five dollars a week, until I am able to do more. Thirteen hundred a year—we can't live on it, but perhaps we could manage? I don't believe I am equal to resuming everything—manage to add to it, I mean?" Mrs. Scollard looked vaguely at her hearers, thinking aloud.
"Now here is where we come in!" cried Happie, starting up in rapture. "We have the best plan, Margery, Gretta and I, but it never seemed to us enough to rely on. But it would help lots; you can't tell how much, till it gets under way. We want to open a tea room, and a circulating library, and we want to make it lovely, somewhere near the drive, or the speedway, or somewhere where people get tired and thirsty, and blown to pieces. We may have to dress up as geishas, because that's the way it's usually done, but we don't want to; it's so silly! The girls never look Japanese."
"Really, Keren-happuch, what are you talking about?" demanded Miss Bradbury.
"Happie is trying to tell you about something we have talked over of late—it was her idea in the first place," said Margery. "We thought that we might—No; that isn't the beginning either! We thought that we must earn money somehow. And we never were able to think of anything that we could do; we are all so very young. And mother would be miserable if we so much as suggested anything that was—well, public, or which threw us in with people or things that weren't very nice indeed. And Happie said: A tea room! And it really does seem to be the very thing, only we couldn't see, much as we wanted to, how it would bring in a great deal of money after we had paid rent and all the other expenses. Even though we meant to add a circulating library to it."
"What does the tea room mean, precisely?" asked Miss Bradbury.
"It means some dark, rich paper—probably red—on the walls, and lots of little tables all around, and the sweetest little Japanese teapots—the kind you get at Mardine's for fifteen or twenty cents on the bargain tables—and dainty teacups, and sugar and cream jugs, and little plates of thin wafers and crackers and sweet cakes, and maybe sardines, because you have to have lemons anyway, for people that take it in their tea; and I say lettuce for sandwiches in the season when it's not too expensive, and, well, 'most anything dainty and good, such as you would get at a tea. And lanterns all around, and the windows darkened with pretty warm, dark Japanesey curtains, so you could have the lanterns lighted all the time. And Laura wants incense sticks, but I don't, because if any one burned those things where I was eating, I shouldn't be eating long. And then book shelves, and new novels in them, and let people help themselves, and charge ten cents a week, three books at a time twenty-five cents—oh, a regular duck of a place!" said Happie in a breath, forestalling Margery.
"A regular poll parrot of a place, I should say, if you are going in for ornithological comparisons, Happie," protested Miss Bradbury. "How you do run on! I don't think I understand. Are you intending to rent a room, and furnish and carry it on in the way you describe—or rather in the way you sketchily outline?"
"We wanted to do it, Aunt Keren," Margery answered for her sister. "But we didn't see any chance of getting enough out of it to warrant trying it. Now, if mother were going to be sure of thirteen hundred a year—if she is strong enough to take half her old work—and Bob went to Mr. Felton at five dollars a week, then I think we girls could make up the rest that we need for expenses. Gretta, we thought, would come down with us for the winter, anyway, and help us in the tea room."
"I am better able to go to the office every day than I am to feel troubled," said Mrs. Scollard truly. "And really I am almost perfectly well again; the Ark and this mountain air have saved me. I certainly shall accept this offer."
"And I will back the girls in this plan to be useful which they have concocted," said Miss Bradbury. "It is really not a bad plan, and perfectly feasible. And being their own plot it would be far better to help them to carry it out, than to offer them a substitute for it. I'll tell you what I will do, Margery and Happie! I will make myself responsible for the rent of your tea room, and you may repay me if I have to meet it, and that will leave the success wholly yours, if success it is to be. After the two first months it will have been tested sufficiently for us to judge."
"Aunt Keren, you are the very best namesake—named-after-sake—a girl could possibly have!" cried Happie in a rapture. "You don't know how we longed and burned to try this scheme, but we didn't see how we could do it without capital enough to pay the rent until we were on our feet. And now you say this! Bless you, bless you!" And Happie seized her financial sponsor, and name donor, around the neck in a hug that set the dignified Miss Bradbury awry in collar, tie, and hair combs.
Miss Bradbury adjusted these accessories with a protesting exclamation that her face belied. She was not only getting used to Happie's irruptiveness, but liking it. "Now I'll tell you something further," she said. "In going about among various degrees and kinds of poor people in New York, I often come upon some one who has a room to rent or a lease to get rid of—sometimes a whole house. In the spring, in the late winter, more correctly, I knew of a dear little, quiet widow who had undertaken more than she could carry on in the matter of rent. She had found a pretty shop, with two rooms above it which she had taken for her dancing school. When I last heard of her she wanted to keep only the two rooms above stairs for the school, and to rent the shop. If she should happen to be offering her place still—she wouldn't rent it except to the right tenants—it would be the very thing for you, a pretty room, precisely the right size, with large windows, and directly on the way to everywhere. More than that Mrs. Stewart would be there to look after you, and make your undertaking safe from any doubtful or unpleasant features—she would chaperon you children. Charlotte, we could not let them open their tea-library combination without an older person to take care of them, could we?"
"No, indeed; but you are all talking and planning so fast that I can't follow you. It is perfectly safe to say I agree with that last statement, but I'm not sure I agree to anything else," said Mrs. Scollard, looking as excited as her children, and far more bewildered.
"That's all that is necessary just now, my dear," said Miss Bradbury. "I think I will go to New York in the morning, see Mrs. Stewart, and get her prices for her shop, if she has it still."
"Oh, Aunt Keren, no!" Margery protested. "You must not go to town just for us. And how we are rushing on with our plan when we never really dreamed that we could carry it out, either!"
"I should not be going down just for that, Margaret," returned Miss Bradbury. "I intended going down in any case. I want to drum up guests for Thanksgiving Day—I thought I would bring Ralph and Snigs back with me."
"Aunt Keren! And you say it so quietly!" cried Happie with her voice full of admiration points. "We're having a Thanksgiving Day this moment. It will be perfectly beyond-tellingly-glorious to have those two boys up here now—especially that it looks like more snow!"
"It will be delightful, dear Aunt Keren," said Margery, with her gentle smile.
"Delightful! Do hear how calmly she speaks, with that temperate, adult adjective!" cried Happie. "Don't leave off extravagant words, and speak like a perfect lady yet, Peggy! There's so much time to be calm and grown-up! Though I suppose you would rather Aunt Keren asked some one else than our Patty-Pan boys!" And Happie glanced significantly at a letter in Margery's hand; the fine, eccentric writing, and the Baltimore postmark had become familiar to the Ark. Through his letters Robert Gaston, Margery's Bar Harbor friend, was winning her mother's respect and liking.
Margery smiled unperturbed, though with heightened color. "I shall be very glad to see the boys, if they come," she said heartily.
"Well, I must go find Gretta and tell her the news of the last hour," said Happie rising with a sigh, for no other joy could assuage the pang this friendship of Margery's cost her whenever she remembered it "Robert Gaston is a telescope turned the wrong way," she declared, "He makes me see Peggy 'way off."
"Just think," Happie added from the doorway. "An hour ago we were without prospects, and since then mother has had her letter, Aunt Keren has given us her blessing, and has promised to help us, and she is going down to-morrow to look up our room, and to bring up Ralph and Snigs! I never heard of such an eventful hour outside the theatre, and there of course you watch years pass at a matinée. Won't Gretta and Bob be dumbfounded? Don't you want to come with me, Margery, and hear the crash when I break the news?"
"Put that way I believe I must come," laughed Margery, as she followed her sister.
There was no "crash" audible in the library where Miss Bradbury and Mrs. Scollard lingered, but they heard a wild whoop from Bob, and then a clamor of voices as he and Gretta and Laura poured out questions, and Margery and Happie answered them as excitedly.
"Dear Miss Keren, you are so good to me and my children!" said Mrs. Scollard, as she saw that Miss Keren was listening to the babel in the room beyond in the highest satisfaction. "Think of all that we owe you already! And now you offer to be responsible for the girls financially, and to let them try this scheme of theirs! I can't bring myself to the point of feeling less than guilty to allow you to do so much."
"You may feel perfectly innocent, Charlotte, for I should do it in one form or another whether you would or no," affirmed Miss Bradbury. And when she said a thing she left little room for doubt that she meant every word that she said. "I have certain plans tucked away in the back of my head in regard to your children," she continued, "and I shall certainly carry them out. Don't forget, Charlotte, that in all the world there is no one who has the claim of kindred upon me; no one with closer ties between us than bind me to you, my beloved friend's daughter, and to her grandchildren, your children. So I shall look after them as far as I can. So much for that part of it, and never let me hear you allude to obligations again! As to the rest, I am not, privately, especially sanguine about the success of the plan these girls have made, and yet it really is a good one, if their inexperience and youth do not defeat it. I thoroughly approve of helping people to carry out their own ideas, however, and not in trying to force one's own upon them. So—unless you had objected—I should like to be responsible for the beginnings of the attempt, and let the girls consider what I expend as a debt to be repaid. I shall back them, Charlotte; that's all."
"And enough," supplemented Mrs. Scollard. "A financial backer is styled an 'angel,' isn't he—in theatrical parlance? I begin to see why."
Miss Bradbury departed in the early frosty morning of the next day. She was gone a week before she wrote announcing her return on the day before Thanksgiving. Not a word did she say of her errand, nor allude to the coming of the Gordon boys. But just when Happie and Bob—and the others of a lesser degree—were beginning to make up their minds that they were defrauded of all that would make the festival festal, and that their disappointment was too sharp to be borne, there came a telegram of but two words. "Boys coming. Keren-happuch," was the burden of the dispatch. There was but one conclusion possible: Miss Keren-happuch was indulging in teasing.
"Youth must be catching," remarked Happie, flying about the room with a feather duster, for it was too late to use a cloth—there were a dozen things to be done, and train time drawing on apace. "Aunt Keren would never have played us a trick like this before she had had the benefit of living with five young Scollards."
"You are Ralph's hostess this time, Gretta," said Laura. "Since he was here you have got the Ark."
"That's so!" cried Bob. "Let's dress up Gretta and put her on a sort of throne in the corner, and bring Aunt Keren and both boys to pay homage to her as their hostess."
"Well, I guess you won't!" cried Gretta, flushing at the bare idea of such a thing.
"Let's all dress up," cried Polly. "Let's look just as funny as we can, and stand in a row all across the steps when Bob drives up."
"Why, that's a great idea, pretty Poll!" Happie approved her. "There isn't time—yes, we'll make time! Hurry up, Gretta; don't stop to polish that glass another minute! Come on up-stairs, and let's whisk through our work there in a jiffy. Then we'll make sights of ourselves with all the old things we can find, and we'll put a big cambric collar on Dundee, and a white ribbon on Dorée, and we'll all sing—what on earth is the best thing to sing when they arrive?"
"Hail to the Chief," suggested Margery.
"Who knows the tune?" demanded Happie. "No, that won't do. What's the best tune? I'll make up words for it; there's no reason why Laura should have a family monopoly of Odes on Great Occasions."
"John Brown's Body—The Battle Hymn of the Republic—is the best tune I know when you want an awful noise, yet one that has a ring in it," said Bob.
"Right you are, my Bobby!" cried Happie. "There's nothing else has the swing and rush of that air. Let's see!" She began to hum the air rapidly as she switched the cover off the dresser in Bob's room, which both the Gordons were to share with him. "This will do!" she announced. "Give me something to write on; lend me your pencil, Bob!" She snatched up a box cover, scribbled hastily for a few moments, scratching out at intervals, but not much, and when she had finished read her effusion to the others.
"You're all right, Happie!" said Bob with as much heartiness in his commendation as the Academie Française could have shown in crowning a poem, if with less elegance. "You sing that when we drive up, the whole crowd of you in a row, and you'll make a hit. Now I've got to hurry off and harness, or I'll keep them waiting."
An hour later the hit was made. Margery and Gretta were almost of equal height; they headed the line, Margery in a sheet and pillow case costume, like a ghost; Gretta attired in a bright blue wrapper, with a patchwork quilt worn as a shawl, and her pink sunbonnet on her head, hastily trimmed with all sorts of artificial flowers in various stages of nearly falling off. Happie was a bride, pinned into window curtains, and with an old lace curtain for an impressive veil that trailed two feet, at the least, behind her. Laura wore a long velvet skirt of her mother's, over which she had draped a diaphanous blue scarf, and this festive costume ended in a full evening dress waist, which bore a suspicious resemblance to an old shirt waist, with the neck and sleeves cut out. But Laura flattered herself that her costume, at least, was impressive; she was reluctant to appear grotesque, even for fun.
Polly's round and serious face was the only thing visible above a great coat of fur which had been discovered in Miss Bradbury's closet, and which enveloped plump Polly from head to heels. Penny wore one of Margery's discarded dancing gowns which had not survived the summer at Bar Harbor. Over it Margery had pinned a Martha Washington kerchief, and without plan or seeking the result hoped for by Laura had been attained for Penelope—she was as picturesque as possible.
Don Dolor came up the driveway with a flourish. It proved him of a settled and sane mind that he did not rear or plunge as he faced this graduated line of funny figures, with beautiful Dundee in the front rank, waving his plume-like tail, and smiling with distended jaws as he barked wildly over a wide collar of white cambric, which he wore around his neck like a harlequin.
Miss Bradbury beamed at the group, evidently very glad to see her family again, from her collie up—or down, for Dundee had taken himself and his collar to the top step, whence he was barking more madly than before as Don Dolor stopped. Ralph and Snigs threw up their hats noiselessly; they would undoubtedly have cheered had not Bob warned them to be quiet, and to listen to their pæan of welcome. At the tops of their voices, but in harmony, for Gretta sang alto, and Laura was equal to sustaining a true tenor, the girls sang Happie's words to the air of The Battle Hymn of the Republic.