"I'll attend to that dark green lady," said Gretta when she and Margery came back. "You let Margery tell you about it. It's more wonderful than finding grandmother's will in the Bittenbender trunk! Polly will help me. I suppose Laura will have to hear what Margery tells you."

"Come over in the corner, Hapsie and Laura," said Margery breathlessly. "I must make it short, because there's so much to do here. Mrs. Stewart—Mrs. von Siegeslied—is all right now; she won't be ill. Just to think that this mysterious Hans Lieder has been coming and coming here because that piano which Mrs. Stewart—his wife, I mean—left here reminded him so much of his own! And it was his own! And he had no idea what had become of her, and there she was right above his head all this time! And to-day is their little boy's birthday, and she came down—never came once before when he was here!—and they met. I never can tell you just what happened when she came out of that swoon. It was the loveliest, most painful scene—Gretta and I cried with them both. But Herr Lieder is plainly as sorry as he can be for the wrong he has done, and she is so glad to see him again that I don't believe she knows he has ever done wrong—yes, she does! She knows it just enough to rejoice more in his return! Women are like angels; they are more glad of one sinner that repents than of ninety-nine who need no repentance."

"Would you rather Robert were just reforming from something awful?" inquired Happie.

"Girls like stainless heroes," retorted Margery with a tiny laugh. "Wait till I'm a woman, Happie! No, I shall always be thankful for Robert's goodness. But our dear little lady up-stairs is in ecstasy at being able to forgive her husband, that's plain. Gretta and I felt dreadfully at being present when Mrs. Stewart opened her eyes and saw that her husband actually was there. She thought it could not be true. But we need not have minded, for neither of them remembered us. We sat and cried and held on to each other quite unnoticed. After a while the two von Siegeslieds were able to talk rationally. Mr. von Siegeslied told his wife that he had succeeded to the family estate and title—he's a baron, it seems—because his elder brother was dead, but that he had felt no desire to go to Germany. He had no heart, he said, for life anywhere. But here where he had lost knowledge of his wife, and where she must be, if she still lived, he would rather linger. He had enough to maintain him, he said; his wants were few, his tastes simple. But now that he had found her, he cried, he would go back to Germany and live among his own people, resume his own name, give her the place and the comforts that should have been hers. Then he remembered us, and he turned to us with his face transfigured. You never could imagine our mysterious and rather fearful Hans Lieder looking like that! 'Margery!' he said. 'It has all come about through your fortunate little tea room. There is no more a Hans Lieder to play for you. In his stead behold the Herr Baron von Siegeslied. Is it not suitable, little maid, that I should be resuming my own name and that it means a song of victory? Soon there will be no Baron von Siegeslied, either, to play for you, nor any longer your Mrs. Stewart so bravely to fight her hard battle alone, teaching the little ones on top of your heads.' He grew more German, Happie, as he grew more excited. 'We are rich people now, little maid, and people of consequence in the Fatherland. Will you allow us to wait on your mother at your home to beg of her a great favor? I want her to lend me my little Clara Schumann. She will trust her Laura to my wife, the best, the saintliest, the sweetest of women! I want to take Laura with me to Germany, into my own home, and I want to give her the musical education that shall prepare her to use the talent God has given her."

Margery paused and looked at Laura who gazed at her blankly, silently for a moment as if she could not understand. Then the color rushed to her face and she began to tremble. "Me? Me to go to Germany? To study music? He wants me?" she screamed.

"Hush-sh, sh!" whispered Margery laying her hand on Laura's arm to quiet her, with her eyes on Happie's eyes questioningly. "Yes, dear, he wants to take you away for a long, long time, to train you as he thinks you should be trained. It is a serious proposition, but Mrs. Stew—von Siegeslied is so lovely that perhaps mother will be willing. Isn't it amazing, Happie? What do you say?"

Happy looked totally unable to say half she thought or felt. "I don't believe Laura will ever be good for anything else," she said sincerely. "And it is too good an offer to refuse—Mrs. Stewart being herself, and a woman to whom mother would trust Laura."

"If I went," said Laura speaking rapidly and only half articulately in her excitement, "I would do everything Mrs. von Siegeslied bade me, and be far better than I was here to deserve it. Girls, you don't know what it means! Don't let mamma say no! Beg for me to be allowed to go."

CHAPTER XIX
PATTY-PANS NO MORE

"It is such an important decision! I make it, but I instantly unmake it. It is hard to trust a little thirteen years old girl to go away from us all to Germany!" exclaimed Mrs. Scollard. Her voice was full of anxiety and her eyes were troubled. It was the last minute; they were expecting the von Siegeslieds every instant to receive the answer to their offer to take Laura to be educated in music. Her mother had decided for and against it many times in the two days in which the family had discussed it. The last decision had been that Laura was to go, but now, with the footfall of Laura's abductor audible, in imagination, on the stairs, once more her mother found herself reverting to the impossibility of giving consent.

Laura had betaken herself to her room and to tears, entirely unable to see her hopes wavering.

"It isn't as though Laura were good for anything else, motherums," repeated Happie. She kept coming back to this argument, which was not meant unkindly, though it had rather that ring. It struck her as a sound argument, for Laura being created especially for music it must be right to fall into line with this opportunity to develop her.

"Charlotte, my dear," Aunt Keren began patiently, for the unnumbered time. "I have known little Mrs. Stew—von Siegeslied a great while, and you know that I would not let one of our children go away in untried hands. She will train Laura up just as you would have done. As to her husband, don't you think that a man who has suffered bitterly from giving himself over to the selfishness of genius will be a good corrective to our little girl's inclination to selfishness, and to counting her art more than her heart? We all know what he is as a musical guide. And as to the obligation, Mr. von Siegeslied has set his heart on taking Laura. It will really be a favor to him to let him have the girl to train, and, while his wife would rather steal Happie, or Polly or Penny, still she will rejoice in having any one of the little Scollards to bring young girlhood into her home. Once more, Charlotte, while I shrink from the responsibility of a decision, still some one must take it, and I strongly advise you to ship your third girl to Germany."

Bob whistled "Die Wacht am Rhein" under his breath, absent-mindedly. His mother turned appealing eyes on him, and just then the bell rang.

"Sie sind da gewesen—sein!" Bob ended triumphantly, after a breath's hesitation on the possibility of another form of the verb, acting on the serviceable German conviction that the more terminal verbal forms the better. German was not Bob's strong point. "There they are, motherums! Well, I say let Laura go. She'll never make a commonplace, domestic, old fashioned girl, like Margery, Happie and Polly—Penny, too, when she gets big enough, so let's try her in the big world. I don't believe one of your girls could turn out much awry, or for long. Transport her, motherums!"

"Yes, mother, it seems to be for the best," agreed Margery, her eyes reflecting the anxiety in her mother's as they met.

Then Polly opened the door, and Mr. and Mrs. von Siegeslied came in. Mrs. Stewart was changed in more than name. Years had dropped from her shoulders, her face was radiant. And could this be the mysterious, shadowy Herr Lieder? The Herr Baron von Siegeslied overflowed with charm. The gloom had vanished from his eyes and mouth. In repose his face still looked life-worn, but joy and peace had taken the place of his morosely forbidding look.

Penny watched his greetings of the older members of her family from across the room, and came over to lean on his knee and express her sense of this change with the freedom of her age. "If you'd looked like this and been Mr. von Siegeslied at first we'd never been afraid of you," she said.

"So! And you were afraid of me!" Mr. von Siegeslied laughed. "Laura was not. Laura knew me in music, but Happie did better—Happie pitied me, didn't you, Fräulein Glücklich?"

Happie looked guilty. "Not at first," she murmured, embarrassed.

"When can Laura be ready to sail? You are going to let us have her?" said Mrs. von Siegeslied.

"Listen to the voice of destiny—I am Destiny," said Miss Keren before Mrs. Scollard could speak. "Mrs. Scollard has had so much to do to make up her mind that when she got it made up she didn't know it—like some one who had bought a blue gown that proved to be green when it was made and worn. She has decided to lend you Laura, that much is settled. Laura, girl!" she expostulated, for Laura had jumped up and whirled around, and then rushed from the room in a tempest of hysterical rejoicing. Miss Keren shook her head. "It is a good deal to undertake, to bring forward the musician and keep in check the emotional girl," she said. "Well, for the rest there are some things which I have decided for Mrs. Scollard. I have taken a house in one of the Fiftieth streets and while she has been hesitating I have taken for granted that she is coming to live in it. There is a family that I want to bring here, into the Patty-Pans; another little widow, Charlotte, but this one has only two girl children. If you don't mind, she will take the remainder of your lease off your hands. We shall move your furniture into the new house, but not try to put anything in order till the autumn, when we return. When must Laura be ready to sail, Mrs. von Siegeslied?"

"We should like to sail on the steamer that leaves New York a week from next Tuesday," said Mr. von Siegeslied apologetically. "It must seem hurried to you, but having decided to return I can hardly wait to get into my own home."

"And the tea room?" cried Margery and Happie together. Their absorbing interest in Laura's going away had driven all recollection of the tea room from their minds until that moment.

"My lease of that building expires in May. Perhaps you can re-rent from its next tenant," said Mrs. von Siegeslied.

"The tea room has fulfilled its end. It is suitable that it should end with that fulfilment," said Miss Keren decidedly. "Neither Mrs. Scollard nor I would care to have the girls down there without you over their heads—like a sort of guardian angel, little Frau von Siegeslied."

"Laura going, the Patty-Pans given up, a new house taken, the tea room abolished—why, it's like an earthquake!" cried Happie.

"I am breathless!" cried Mrs. Scollard at last. "Why are we out in this cyclone of events?"

"But they are all favorable breezes, motherums!" cried Happie with a reassuring pat. Laura came back just then with such an uplifted look on her face that her own family hardly knew her. She went straight to her mother and put both her hands into the warm ones that clasped them as if they would hold the child, even now.

"I solemnly promise to obey Mrs. von Siegeslied precisely as I would you," began Laura impressively. "I solemnly promise to write to you every day a journal of all I do and think, and mail it to you each week. I solemnly promise to work as hard as I can to be as great a musician as Herr von Siegeslied thinks I can be. Because I am glad, glad, GLAD that I am going! And I mean to do everything I can to be worthy of such a great, such a very great, wonderful Opportunity!" Laura was immensely serious and she spoke of her opportunity with a capital letter in her voice.

Mr. von Siegeslied looked at her with the first twinkle the Scollards had seen in his eyes. "Hear, hear!" he applauded. "That is right, my little Clara Schumann! Do all that you can, as I hope we shall do, and nobody can do more—not even Apollo, the chief of musicians! My intention, Mrs. Scollard, is to take a house in Leipsic—my estates lie not far from the city—and make a little home. My wife will see to it that our Laura does not lack the home training, while I watch over her musically. I am much mistaken if the child does not prove a pride to us all. I think she has much talent. If she adds industry to that talent, she will go far. I thank you for intrusting her to us." He had arisen to go, and his little wife arose with him and stood with her arm around Margery, from whom she dreaded to part.

"Laura has made her promises, please accept a pledge from me," said Herr von Siegeslied. "I will faithfully look after the little girl, and do for her everything in my power. You will miss your home, Laura, more than you realize. You will have many dark days when you will long to throw up every chance in life only to get back here into this merry, affectionate group. The artist must sacrifice much and suffer loneliness, longing, weariness of body and soul. But the recompense comes. Be assured, Mrs. Scollard, that the little girl shall have the best of care. And with all my faults I keep a promise. The von Siegeslieds brought down their name from the crusading days, and they are men of honor." The former Herr Lieder looked around him proudly, and his hearers felt certain that he would keep his pledge to them and be good to Laura.

But his sweet wife did better. She went up to Mrs. Scollard and putting her arms around her, kissed her. "Thank you for lending me the child," she whispered. "I will do my best. My child is dead."

And after that brief speech Mrs. Scollard's last doubt of Laura's welfare in these hands finally vanished.

It was not half after nine when the von Siegeslieds went away. Bob rushed out to the kitchen and beat a tattoo on the opposite dumb waiter door. Snigs responded in the preliminary stages of preparation for bed.

"Get your collar on—or don't if you are opposed to doing it—but get Ralph anyway, and come on over here," Bob said. "We're having upheavals, and I'm not perfectly certain whether I half like it. We've got news for you—tell your mother to come, and I'll go around and lower the drawbridge for you to get in."

Bob shut the dumb waiter door with emphasis and without delaying to learn whether or not Snigs was going to act on his suggestion.

"I've called the Gordons," Bob said, explaining his haste to reach the door, as he passed the parlor.

The Gordons came, the mother also, and the Scollards poured out their budget of news. Laura was to sail for Germany in less than two weeks. The tea room was to be given up, with the dancing school of the former Mrs. Stewart. But—and this was not wholly pleasant tidings—the Patty-Pans flat was to be abandoned, and the Scollards were to make one family with Miss Bradbury in the house she had taken much farther down in town.

Ralph, who had been standing to receive all these amazing items, forgot manners and dropped on a chair, astride of it, his chin resting on its back. Gloom, nay, positive consternation was on his face.

"You're not!" he gasped. "You're not going to move from here!"

"We are going to keep a hold on the Patty-Pans by letting it pass into the hands of some one I know," said Miss Keren. She did not say that she was going to lease the flat for the Mrs. Leland who was coming into it, because Miss Keren never spoke of her good deeds. "And Ralph, you and Snigs are going to spend the entire summer in the Ark, the guests of Gretta, as proprietor, and of me as householder. We are not going to be separated, dear Gordon boys!"

Ralph's expression of dismay hardly lightened. "It can't be the same," he said, and his voice was husky. "Look at to-night, how Bob called us over to tell us the news! There's a big difference between being across a narrow passage and being four miles apart—especially in winter. We've got to stay right where we are for four years more. This is too near Columbia for us to move. And when I get through college there will be Snigs still struggling to acquire learning! We couldn't do better than to stay in our flat. Imagine us in it and other people in here!"

He looked at Happie as he spoke, and his head dropped on his arms with a groan that he intended to be mistaken for a burlesque, but which sounded perfectly sincere.

"Oh, we won't drift apart, Ralph!" Happie cried earnestly. "I think we are the kind of friends that are not geographical friends. I dread leaving the Patty-Pans myself—don't hear that, Auntie Keren, because it doesn't mean I'm truly sorry to go. The house will be great fun. Only——"

"Only you are quite right to love the bright little place where your brave mother made a home for you so long," interrupted Miss Keren. "But now for the next stage in your progress."

"It will be far, far better for you, dear girls, as you are growing older," said Mrs. Gordon. "But Ralph is quite right in foreseeing us disconsolate without you. And Laura is really going to Germany? And by and by Margery will be married! But the greatest change will be Laura's." She looked at Laura thoughtfully, realizing that it would be another Laura who would come back to the changing family group.

"She is going over to learn to be a Lauralei," observed Bob, objecting to the note of sentiment creeping into the conversation.

Mrs. Gordon laughed. "Come, Ralph and Charley; I don't think these neighbors of ours can have any more news to tell us, and if they have I don't think we could bear up under more. Good-night, nice people! We congratulate you on all these delightful happenings, but you can't expect us to reach the heights of being glad. It is hard to think of breaking up our perfect relations. When must it be?"

"If Charlotte thinks she can accomplish it," began Miss Keren doubtfully, "it would be better to go up to Crestville the very day that Laura sails. We ought to be there early, for gardening reasons—and it would be better."

"Oh!" exclaimed Mrs. Scollard catching her breath. Then to every one's surprise she added: "I can be ready then quite as well as later, and I should be glad to go."

Margery and Happie knew that their mother dreaded to come back to the little home without Laura. It would seem less like a parting if they all went to the Ark when Laura went away.

Gretta beamed at this hearing. She longed for her mountains more and more as the warmth of spring increased.

The Gordons went back to their own domain, Ralph with a face so gloomy that it was hard to recognize him whose liveliness failed then for the first time.

Bob closed the door behind them and came back with a thoughtful look. "Aunt Keren," he said, "I can't go to the Ark with the rest. I am a year older, and I can't leave Mr. Felton as I did last year and expect to get back in the fall. You know I'd like to spend the summer up there, but how can I? I think I'll ask Mrs. Gordon to take me in with her boys, and you'll let me come up Fridays, or Saturdays if I can't do better?"

"Oh, Bob!" exclaimed Gretta involuntarily, with such profound disappointment in her voice that they all laughed, and she colored furiously.

"I've got to be a man, Gretta," said Bob. "Time's up in which I can be merely a thing of beauty."

"And for me, too, Bobby boy!" cried his mother. "Isn't it strange that I did not remember my responsibilities until just now! I can't go off rusticating this summer as I did last year when I was an invalid, Miss Keren. Bob and I will board—no, we will stay in the Patty-Pans, and visit you and the children in the Ark for nice Englishlike 'week ends' every week!"

"Charlotte, dear, listen. You have a new position. You are no longer to be foreign correspondent to your down-town firm, but Housekeeper Plenipotentiary to Her Crotchety Highness, the Princess Keren-happuch. And a sorry time you will probably have of it!" said Miss Keren with emphasis. "To-morrow I am going to get you to meet me with Happie at my lawyer's and we are going to execute certain documents that will give Happie a legal claim on me."

"Shall I take your name, Auntie Keren?" inquired Happie.

"You are to add Bradbury, but not substitute it for Scollard," said Miss Keren.

"And not with another hyphen, please?" implored Happie. "Not Keren-happuch Bradbury-Scollard! Because my signature would look like those paper dolls cut in strings from folded paper—those that all hold hands, you know. I don't need a legal claim on you, auntie dear. I'll claim you illegally just as irresistibly."

"I never tried to resist you, Happie, but there may come a day when the legal claim will be useful," retorted Miss Keren. "I will dispense with the hyphens. Charlotte, as I was saying, to-morrow we will attend to my legal adoption of Happie. Then she will have a real claim on me. The first thing she would do if she had an income, she told me, would be to establish you in a house in idleness. I am not going to do that. But I am going to ask you to give up your position and come to look after an old woman whose dear and only daughter you are. Please don't interrupt me, Charlotte. You can't realize how close to my heart is this plan of mine! And for the other side of it, Charlotte, did you ever read good little books in your childhood in which the dutiful were rewarded and the naughty punished? I am not inclined to think your new life will be entirely free from annoyance, since I am moving you to Fifty-Eighth Street, and not to paradise. But I think it will be easier than braving the world daily as you now do. All these years, more than five, my girl, ever since your widowhood, I have watched you cheerfully, unflaggingly working for your children, teaching them, putting under foot and out of sight your own sorrow and weariness of body and mind. Dear Charlotte, like the good little girls in the story books your reward has come. We will go out of these little Patty-Pan rooms into our own home, and by and by, if our children—your children, and my grandchildren, dear daughter of Roland and Elizabeth,—leave us, we will live on together and you shall help me get ready to follow my two best beloved. It is all settled, Charlotte, and you cannot hesitate to take what good there is in it for you, remembering the good you will do me. And don't you suppose I enjoy being the channel through which you receive a little reward for your great courage and devotion?"

It was a long speech for terse Miss Keren, but she made it rapidly, and there were tears in her eyes and a quiver in her voice as she ended it with hands outstretched to Mrs. Scollard.

Margery sobbed under her breath, Happie walked swiftly to the window. Laura forgot her theme; her hands crashed down on the piano keys and her eyes overflowed with happy tears that sprang out of the warmest spot in her self-centred little heart as she heard her mother praised.

But Bob, who had listened with a face contorted by his efforts to appear unmoved, gave up the attempt at last. He crossed over to Miss Keren and lifted her bodily in his arms. He kissed her over and over again, and he was not ashamed that he made her cheeks wet from the contact with his own moist ones.

"Aunt Keren, you're dead right!" he cried. "You've got ahead of me in making a home for mother, but I don't grudge it to you! And if ever I forget what I owe you—for all our sakes—then I'm not Roland Spencer's grandson."

Miss Keren clasped the big boy close. He could not have thanked her in any words that would have warmed her heart like these. "You're his own boy, my Bob!" she said. "Girls, there isn't one earthly thing to cry about!" she added, shamelessly ignoring her own brimming eyes. "Gretta, you rival our Crestville brook! Next winter you are to be given an education, my girl, that will more than take the place of what the Barkers wanted to do for you! You are part of my plans, Gretta, and part of my family. Go to bed, children. This has been an exciting evening."

"Yes, let's turn in," agreed Bob, somewhat ashamed of his recent outburst. "And it's à bas, la Patty-Pans! is it?"

"No! Long live our Patty-Pans—it's overflowed, that's all!" cried Happie turning from the window. "It's 'Lochaber no more.' I wonder what that air is? Laura, you don't know?"

Laura shook her head. "But I could make a song, if you all would wait for me," she said.

"So can I—without waiting!" cried Happie in one of her poetic outbursts which Bob said "weren't real poetry, but were real inspiration," and she began to sing:

This gem of song was chanted to such a simple air that Laura at once fell into an accompaniment, and the Scollards sang it, marching with difficulty up and down the tiny room as they sang.

"My dears! The people down-stairs! And we've tried to be good neighbors!" remonstrated Mrs. Scollard. "It's past bedtime. Please defer your farewell chorus! I'm afraid the other tenants will be glad we're going!"

"Not a bit of it, motherums!" cried Happie, catching up Jeunesse Dorée who was vainly trying to get out of the way of the celebration. "How will you like to be a backyard kitten and not a fire escaper, my golden catkins? For a backyard will be thine when it's Patty-Pans no more!"

CHAPTER XX
EAST AND WEST

Amid the bulk of trunks and packing cases filling the scant space of the Patty-Pans, Laura's importance loomed impressively. There was much to be done to get the family belongings ready to vacate the little apartment on the date set, but though carpets were being taken up, books packed, walls dismantled of pictures, the whole dismal process of moving getting done, Laura's sublime sense of what had befallen her had the effect of narrowing down the entire process to making the genius of the family ready for Germany.

"She's pitched on high C—for the high seas—and she drowns out all the other instruments," said Happie, compunctious for feeling disgusted on the eve of a long separation.

The little girl's outfit was to be simple, for once in Germany she would be more really a little girl than she had been at home, and a student little girl at that, whose needs are few. But Laura dove into literature with a view to getting points on the outfitting of the heroine who crosses the ocean, and she emerged with convictions as to steamer chairs, steamer trunks, steamer rugs, sal volatile and numerous other accessories, down to a cap and veil.

"I should like a veil that fluttered on the breeze when I leaned over the rail to watch the—the dolphins," she said.

"My goodness! Dolphins, Laura! Drawing Neptune's chariot, or just out on a lark?" cried Happie. "Porpoises, more likely! And it would be better if they were porpoises, because you know the Mock Turtle told Alice that no wise fish would go anywhere without a porpoise. He said: 'If any fish came to me and told me he was going on a journey, I should say: with what porpoise?'" Happie laughed with as much enjoyment as if she were seven years old, having her Alice read to her for the first time. She knew most of both the Alice books by heart—not that one can know Alice any other way!

Laura frowned. "I am not a fish, though I am going on a long, long journey," she said. "And I am glad to say there is plenty of purpose in my journey."

"But you know the Mock Turtle replied that he meant what he said, when Alice suggested that he meant 'purpose,' not porpoise. However, you never did like Lewis Carroll! As to a veil, Laura, that you shall have. I'll buy you—no! I'll give you one! Don't you remember that lovely pale ecru thing I found? The one with chenille dots? I'll give you that, and it shall flutter on the breeze, just as much as e'er you please, every near-by nose 'twill tease, till the seasick ones shall sneeze, while the por-phins sport at ease—isn't that a lonely rhyme to get started on?" cried Happie.

"Very lovely, and perfectly idiotic!" said Laura, walking out of the room in rigid disgust.

Laura's offense at ridicule never lasted long, chiefly because she had the genius' chronic craving for sympathy. She came back after half an hour dragging with her a Smyrna rug, very much worn, but which in the course of its wearing had worn more on the Scollard nerves than on itself. It was one of those ugly gifts to which the most fortunate mortals are sometimes liable from their friends.

"Do you think I could use this as a steamer rug, Happie?" Laura asked anxiously.

Happie looked up and out of the packing-case which for the moment swallowed her. Her laugh was so contagious that Aunt Keren came into the room laughing, and Margery ran in ready to join the fun.

"Only see, Auntie Keren and Margery, what Laura wants to take with her for a steamer rug!" cried Happie. "That dreadful, worn floor rug—Smyrna at that!"

"You funny little Exportation!" smiled Miss Keren. "That would hardly do. You won't need a chair and a rug, for you won't sit mummified on the voyage. Be satisfied with your delightful new flat trunk, that is the only steamer appurtenance you need. Are you going down to close the tea room this afternoon, girls?"

"Yes, Aunt Keren. The three E's are coming in, and the expressman is coming after our boxes. We are to send them right to the new house, aren't we?" Happie arose, dusting fragments of pine from her knees as she spoke.

"Yes, except the books that you are giving to the hospital; better send them direct," replied Miss Keren. "I am going there now. I'll stay till the boxes arrive. Don't you think you ought to be getting started?"

"Immejit, ma'am!" said Happie. She was such a happy Happie these eventful and promising days that she could not talk sober sense.

Margery was ready that moment, so Happie and Gretta and Laura hurried on their hats and took Polly and Penny down to superintend shipping away the furnishings of the tea room, and to witness the ceremony of finally locking the door.

It was already a denuded tea room, the melancholy wreck of its pretty self. It had been a successful room, and more than an important one. The girls looked around its walls and stripped book-shelves, and wondered if any other venture could have to its credit in such a speedy closing so many vitally important results as this one showed. The reuniting of the von Siegeslieds, Laura's consequent good fortune, the endowment of Ralph for college—these good things were the direct consequence of the "Tea Room and Circulating Library Conducted by Six Girls."

Margery took the card bearing this legend from its hooks with a reminiscent smile, half pensive, yet wholly glad. Gentle Margery bore a thankful and a happy heart in these days. Not quite six months had passed since the Scollards had come back to town, and this half year had been teeming with good fortune for them all, but it had brought to Margery—Robert.

A step outside made her look up just as she was creeping out of the deep window in which their announcement card had hung. An old lady, very small and somewhat bent, clad in deep mourning, was entering. She was so unlike her old self that for an instant Margery did not recognize in her Mrs. Jones-Dexter.

"I wanted to come here once more. The Charlefords told me you were giving up here to-day," she said as Margery sprang to place a chair for her.

She looked up in the girl's face and Margery could hardly meet the wistful, tear-dimmed eyes. She knew they both remembered that Margery had been little Serena's loving admiration.

"We are very glad to see you, Mrs. Jones-Dexter. But we are not going away, except for the summer. In the autumn we are coming back to live with Miss Bradbury in Fifty-eighth Street. Perhaps we shall see you then?" said Margery, trying to give the pitiable old lady time to gain the self-control for which she was struggling.

"Ah, yes, I hope to see you, all of you, as long as I live," she said. "I have brought you something to-day, each of you. It seems rather like a parting, this breaking up of your pleasant little tea room, even though we shall meet elsewhere next year. I wanted your little Penny to have all of Serena's prettiest gowns and ribbons, if you will permit me to send them to her. She is younger, but my child was small of her age, and they will fit her. And I want Polly to take care of her dolls, with Penny's help, and this little ring is for Polly. And to Laura I have brought this pin. Serena was too young to wear it, but she cared for it a great deal. And somehow I thought that Happie would be fond of this worn little copy of Stevenson's "Garden of Verse." Serena used to sleep with it under her pillow. And you, Margery, will take this miniature of my child. It is wonderfully like her, and it is beautiful as a work of art. You loved her and so will doubly care for it. You and Happie are to take, each of you, one of these chains—Serena has worn them both. Don't thank me!" Mrs. Jones-Dexter put up her hand to check Margery. "Such gifts are not for ordinary words. Now, as to Ralph. You know that I have settled upon him what was Serena's income?"

"We know it with unspeakable pleasure, dear Mrs. Jones-Dexter," replied Margery folding together the case that hid the lovely child face looking up to her from the ivory as it used to smile at her up-stairs.

"Tell me truthfully. You like Ralph Gordon? You think he is a good sort of boy?" asked the old lady making ready to go.

"He is the best boy I have ever known—except our best-of-best Bob!" said Margery warmly. "He is upright, truthful, kind and tender as a girl, full of fun, but reliable, and a model son and brother. We think there never could be better boys than both the Gordons—but Ralph is—well, Ralph is the elder. Perhaps Snigs—Charley, will be just as fine at his age."

"Good! I mean to do a great deal for him—for them all—if I approve them. I knew that your opportunity of judging them was better than mine could be," said Mrs. Jones-Dexter. "My pretty Margery, did you know that my grandnephew, whom you praise so warmly, has a boy's love for your Happie?"

"Dear me, no, Mrs. Jones-Dexter!" cried Margery looking over to where Happie was busy with Gretta, putting into boxes the last remaining cups for the expressman's taking.

"He has," nodded Mrs. Jones-Dexter. "It is too early to be important, but it might be!"

"We girls have been brought up not to play at romance. Happie and Ralph are fond of each other, as Happie and Bob are—not as much so, of course, but in that same frank, chummy way," said Margery. "Mother doesn't like to have us think of romance—till it comes!" Margery stopped, with a laugh and a blush.

"As it has, and early too, to you!" commented Mrs. Jones-Dexter. "Quite right your mother is! Yet Ralph is dreaming of Happie. We will keep our own counsel, Maid Margery, and hope that the dream may grow into something more than a boy's first romance, if my grandnephew is the boy you think him. Happie, Gretta, come here and say how do you do and good-bye to me! I am going. Laura, bon voyage, little girl! Kiss me, Polly and Penny." She stooped to kiss the children, and Polly gave her a gratuitous hug, moved by the expression in the desolate old eyes. But Penny did not get her kiss. Dropping her veil over her face Mrs. Jones-Dexter fled from Penny's warm, living embrace.

There was not time to dwell on the sadness aroused by this visit, for the expressman arrived earlier than he was expected, and proved to be so dense-minded that Margery and Happie committed their boxes to his care with the firm conviction that the cups and other tea room belongings would go to the hospital and the books to the new house, in spite of the cards attached to them and the girls' reiterated charges.

The three E's swept down like three of the four winds at the last moment, just when the girls were giving them up. They were standing taking mental farewell of the now empty room, bare of all save Mrs. von Siegeslied's piano. This stood crated and ready for its voyage to Germany. It had been too integral a part of the reunion of the husband and wife to be abandoned. Had it not been for this piano the mysterious Herr Lieder would not have haunted the tea room, nor been discovered as but the disguise of the Herr Baron von Siegeslied.

"We can't stay one single second," panted Edith Charleford, proving her words by dropping on an empty box, the only remaining seat, and fanning herself with the hat she promptly removed. "We got late going to a photographer and getting our pictures taken. Those strip pictures, Hapsie—six views of the face in the cutest ovals, all for twenty-five cents! We had them done to give Laura, and they are so nice we are going to get some printed for you. Here are yours, Laura. Take them over to the Vaterland, and remember we when these you see! Please look at the left profile on the strip of me! I had no idea the right side of my face was so different!"

"Let me see, Laura!" cried Happie, crowding up. "It isn't, Edith. It's alike. It's the left side that is different!"

"Happie, you are such a delicious idiot!" sighed Edith with the most sincerely complimentary intentions. "There isn't one of the girls says the lovely nonsense foolish things you do. That's why we can't get along without you all summer! Do you know what? I've got mamma to promise to go up to one of the hotels—you're to select it—in your mountains, for awhile this year. We'd like to see Crestville, the Ark and our Happiness this summer."

"Hurrah!" remarked Happie. "We are worth seeing, all three of us. Gretta and I will drive up to call on you in state at the big hotel, and when you return the call you shall come down and play in our barn and ride on our hay wagon in no state at all."

"Hurrah!" echoed Edith. "That sounds fine. Now we must go home. Oh, there are the boys; that nice, independent, kind-hearted Ralph Gordon, your Bob—and Margery's Robert! Is my hat on straight, Eleanor? And am I mashing my bows with my hat pins?"

"No, only trying to," remarked Elsie with a glance that pointed her remark. Elsie did not disdain slang nor a pun.

"Gretta, there is a package mother sent you. She said that you were not to think she considered it in any sense payment for what you did for me last winter. But she did want to give you some remembrance, since you wouldn't go to school."

Gretta almost laughed. "That would have been a reminder!" she said as she took the small square package. She opened it while the others were diverted by the arrival of the boys. It was a dark green leather case, in which rested a beautiful tiny watch. The watch was held by a pin, its design the seal of the State of Pennsylvania, dark blue and green enamel on a gold ground. A card lay on the satin cushion of the box. On it was written: "To Miss Angela Key-Stone, from Elsie Barker and her grateful mother."

Gretta closed the box. Bob looked at her, wondering at the pleasure in her face and thinking, as he thought of late more often than ever: "My, but Gretta's a beauty!"

He said aloud: "We four came to take you girls home from the ex-tea room for the last time. Nice little place, we're sorry to say good-bye!"

The girls gathered in the doorway. They looked back as Margery put her key in the lock—the key that she was to relinquish to an agent in the morning—just as she had done when, nearly half a year ago, they had come down to see that everything was in order for their opening. But then Robert had not been there!

"All together say good-bye, and then, Margery, shut and lock the door!" cried Bob. "Now then: One, two, three—Good-bye!"

Margery pulled the door together, turned her key took it out and handed it to Bob, tried the door to make sure it was fast, and they all walked away. The tea room was no more!

There were not many days left in the Patty-Pans. Mrs. Scollard was at home to attend to the duties with which they were filled, at home for good and all, in fact. The foreign correspondence was over and done with. It all seemed like a dream, but to prove that it was not one there was the new house down in Fifty-eighth Street to which frequent visits were necessary, and the trunks into which she was packing summer clothing for the Ark.

Laura began to realize the great change that lay before her as these last days slipped past. Her pompous manner began to shrink; in its place came a timidity and wistfulness that was most becoming. Laura forgot that she was a genius and remembered only that she was a little girl about to separate from the best mother in the world for the first time and for a long time. Although she had grown too tall for rocking, she fell into the habit of creeping into her mother's room every night at dusk to be held in her low chair and rocked as if she had been three instead of thirteen. Her heels scraped on the floor, bare except for a rug left out to lay in front of the bed, but if the heels scraped, Laura's arms were tight around her mother's neck, and mother and daughter talked and talked, laying in a store of confidence and advice against the days of separation. There was so much that was comforting and intimate in these twilight confidences that they consoled Mrs. Scollard for the coming parting, even while they made her feel that she could ill spare this queer and somewhat remote child from out her little flock.

At last there came the morning when, everything finished, the Scollards were to leave the Patty-Pans. Jeunesse Dorée was protestingly strapped in his basket; the two least children were ready, Polly in charge of the yellow cat, Penny intrusted with Phyllis Lovelocks, Polly's doll; Penny's family was never fit to travel in the public eye. Laura's ship sailed in the forenoon, and from Hoboken, so that her family was to see her off, dine as best they could in their station and take the train for Crestville which left at two in the afternoon.

Bob was going with them. He was tempted to regret the added twelve months which entailed upon him the responsibility of increased age, and prevented his spending an uninterrupted summer in the country, as he had done the preceding year.

Miss Keren, crisp and brisk as usual in the excitement of marshaling her adopted family forever out of the pleasant little flat into a life of greater leisure and more opportunity, tied the strings of her little black straw bonnet with a snap. Then she picked up her gloves and turned from the window, with its background of jutting wall, which had been serving her as a mirror in lieu of mirrors packed and being moved out and into the vans below.

"Now, Laura, little girl, bid your old Aunt Keren good-bye, for I am going down to the Fifty-eighth Street house to receive these vans when they get there. I will meet you at the station, Charlotte, on the Hoboken side, of course. If anything happened that I didn't get there—as I shall unless these drivers are more than slow!—go right on to Crestville, and send Don Dolor down to the noon train to meet me to-morrow. Good-bye, Laura child. Remember to work hard at your music, but harder at your character. God bless you, dear."

Miss Keren walked away without a backward glance at the little Patty-Pans. But its proper tenants gave it many last looks as they slowly filed out. It had been home for nearly six years, and, "be it ever so flat, home is home," as Bob truthfully said. The Scollards left their own furniture slowly starting away from the house. The janitor and the hall boy waved them a farewell, but the Gordon flat was blank.

First among the crowd on the dock of the great white liner was Ralph, and just behind him was Snigs with their mother, and to their right all of Happie's E's, Robert Gaston and the von Siegeslieds, waiting the coming of the Scollards.

There was not much time for lingering; the Scollards were somewhat later in arriving than they had meant to be. The entire party crowded over the gangway and on to the swarming deck of the ship, amid the groups of gay, tearful, excited and tired people about to sail or to say good-bye.

There was time to inspect the stateroom which Laura was to share with Mrs. von Siegeslied, time to peep at the salon, and rapidly to glance at the decks and then to return to the stateroom to admire the flowers which had been sent by her pupils to her who had been Mrs. Stewart, and whose interesting change of name and fortune had been an absorbing topic for a day or two among her friends.

"Must you go, mamma?" asked Laura, looking white and helpless.

"I go west and you go east, Laura. Suppose I leave you here? Then after a little while Mrs. von Siegeslied will bring you out on deck and you will see us and wave to us as you steam out and we watch you from the dock!" proposed Mrs. Scollard cheerfully.

But Laura felt her mother's arms tighten around her as the little girl clutched her. "I'll say good-bye to you all here: Penny first," said Laura.

Penny kissed her again and again as Laura devoured the Scollard baby's soft cheek. Next Polly, quiet and staid and deeply impressed, kissed good-bye this first sister to leave her. Happie hugged Laura speechlessly and relinquished her to Margery, who folded her in her arms in an embrace almost maternal.

"I'll kiss you good-bye, Robert, because you may be my brother while I'm gone," sobbed Laura, overcome by this leave taking.

Robert kissed the child and put into her hot hands a small package. "A consolation prize; open it after you start," he whispered.

Ralph, Snigs, Mrs. Gordon, Mrs. Charleford, all the E's, bade Laura good-bye with warm good wishes.

"Mamma, dear, dearest mamma!" whispered Laura, and mother and daughter held each other close for a minute.

"But I'm glad, I'm very glad I'm going, and I shall come back famous!" declared Laura bravely, though tears made the prophecy difficult.

The Scollards drew up in line on the dock. Bob had joined them. He had lingered to say good-bye to Laura after the others, with a word of elder brotherly council that he had not cared to let any one else hear.

The great white ship swung out of the slip and into the open stream. The bright May sunshine lighted her clean scrubbed decks and illumined the pale and tear-stained, yet jubilant face of the little aspirant for glory. Laura waved her hands to her assembled family, held fast on one side by Mrs. von Siegeslied's arm, and on the other by the hand of him who had been Herr Lieder, laid caressingly and with a promise in its touch, on her shoulder.

"We are a fortunate family!" declared Happie. "The six luckiest girls in the world."

"And boy," supplemented Bob. "Laura eastward, we westward! Now to dine, and then: Ho for Crestville and our mountains and green fields once more!"