In her excitement she had spoken in English, and the compliment was quite lost on Frieda who had not yet learned the meaning of "fetching." That young person's sulks were not dissipated by the call, accordingly, and there is no telling what depths of obstinate misery she might have reached, had not Karl's parcel fallen to the floor and called attention to itself. With a manner which suggested to her mirror that life was distinctly not worth while, Frieda lifted the object and drearily removed the wrappings.

From a small carved frame Karl's clear honest face looked out at her, and a card in the corner read—in German—"Remember the compact, Comrade!"

Like a flash brightness came back to Frieda's face. Good cheer was much more natural to her than moroseness. From the face in the picture she turned her gaze to the tousled reflection in the mirror. "The Fatherland is not much honored by such a representative!" she said, and began taking down her hair with a fine energy.

In the living-room downstairs teacups were clinking, and girls' voices, subdued and sweet, mingled with laughter. Hannah, her back to the door, was talking merrily to Dot, to whom she had taken an instantaneous liking; Catherine bent anxiously over the tea-tray on the wicker table in the window when Polly, from the comfortable depths of a low chair, looked up and saw on the landing of the stairs a picture that made her catch her breath.

Frieda, in a pale pink mull gown, with roses in her long soft sash, her yellow braids wound into a garland around her head, her cheeks burning with shyness, and her big eyes looking wistful and sweet, stood waiting. Polly sprang up with a soft little "O!" Catherine, looking up, smiled a welcome, but Polly went forward and taking Frieda's hands in both of hers, said eagerly: "We've been waiting and waiting for you, Frieda."

Dot was introduced, but her usual self-possession promptly deserted her. "I always feel as though I ought to shout to a foreigner," she had confessed to Hannah, "and in order not to do that, I just have to keep still." Catherine, who had felt a little rebuffed by Frieda's chilly manner at the station, and Hannah, not quite sure what the present mood might indicate, were both willing to leave to Polly the role she had undertaken. Frieda sat quite near her, and watched her pretty bright movements with gentle interest, maintaining a silence meanwhile only surpassed in completeness by Dot's. Hannah rattled on, but there was a hollowness in the rattle that made Catherine's hostess heart falter. She was never fluent, herself. Her gentle art consisted in making her guests entertain themselves and each other.

Then Dr. Helen came in, big, strong and competent, socially and in every other way.

Her welcome to Frieda would have warmed an iceberg's heart. She hugged Hannah, and gave her right hand to Polly and the left to Dot. "Give me a taste of your tea, Daughter," she said, as she took off her gloves and her hat and seated herself. "It will take something as strong as tea to heal my weary spirit this afternoon. I've just had an emergency call."

Dr. Helen's eyes smiled reminiscently, and Dot awoke.

"Do tell us, do, do, Dr. Helen," she pleaded. "I know it's something funny, by the twinkle in your eye. And we'll never, never tell."

Dr. Helen tasted her tea leisurely, and added a slice of lemon.

"I don't tell tales about my patients, but there is no sense in a rule that isn't transgressed once in a while. You wouldn't know it was a rule! And I do believe you girls will enjoy this and never tell."

"You 'give us credit for more discretion than you have, yourself?'" quoted Catherine.

"If you like to put it that way! I was overtaken on my way home to greet these visitors by a messenger from Mrs. Swinburne, saying that Elsmere was very ill. It is a wonder that he has lived as long as he has, with his reckless tendencies and such erratic care. So I hastened over to the house. Mrs. Swinburne was in a mild state of hysterics, and it was some time before I could quiet her enough to learn the difficulty. Then my alarm vanished, changed to wrath, would perhaps be more accurate. Elsmere had eaten all her pills! They were pills that would not have hurt a cat. Mrs. Swinburne's ailments are of a nature to require very weak remedies."

"Bread and butter?" asked Dot, with a twinkle as merry as the doctor's own.

"Something of that sort! But Elsmere did not know that. They might have been morphia or arsenic for all he knew. The principle in his case was the same. His mother said 'no symptoms had set in as yet,' but she wanted me to administer an antidote at once. I couldn't refuse her!"

"Mother! What did you do?"

"First I caused the patient to be removed to his own room and the doors to be closed. Then I gave him a sound scolding and a good smart spanking."

"O dear Doctor Helen!" sighed Polly softly, while Dot clapped her hands with glee, and even Catherine showed signs of satisfaction.

"Did his mother hear you?"

"If she had, I was prepared to tell her it was necessary to restore the circulation. I was afraid the child might howl, but it was a new experience to him and he took it so very pleasantly that I am now worried for fear he liked it!" Dr Helen set down her teacup and turned to Frieda. "You will think me a barbarous physician, Frieda, but really this boy has needed discipline for a long time, and there is no one to give it to him. His pranks are often dangerous."

"Like the building of a fire under the barn to keep his cat warm."

"Yes, and making a ladder of kindling wood and climbing up to the second story on it."

"He is a pretty naughty boy," finished Dr. Helen, "and a very sweet attractive one withal. I hope I made it clear to-day, that he is not to go about eating medicine. Now I must hear how Mrs. Eldred is, and what sort of a journey you had. Did Catherine make you properly comfortable?"

Hannah drew close to Dr. Helen and cuddled her hand as she answered. Then she suddenly said: "O, you know, Frieda and I saw Miss Lyndesay just before we came away. Do tell about it, Frieda."

Frieda's face lighted at the name. "She is very wonderful," she said shyly. "She said: 'Let me greet myself to them.' She finds herself well, and her house is beautiful."

"I am so glad. Thank you very much for bringing us direct word from her. See! this is the portrait she painted of Catherine some time ago." And Dr. Helen took Frieda a little apart to get a good light on the painting of Catherine and Hotspur, almost the only picture the big room with its walls of books contained. It developed that Frieda was very fond of dogs and her rapture over the picture made it necessary to call in the original, who instantly recognized in her a discriminating soul. Frieda dropped down on the leather window-seat and fondled his tawny sides with the deepest feeling of rest she had had in two days. "He understands me," she thought, with almost passionate gratitude.

Polly and Dot bade her good-by in a few minutes. "I'm going to ask you to go out on the river with me and talk German to me all alone. I've studied it in college," said Polly, "and I do want to see whether I can understand a real German. We won't let Catherine or Hannah go. I should be afraid to try before them, but I don't believe I should be at all afraid of you."

Frieda caught Polly's hand in hers, and suddenly carried it to her lips and kissed it. Polly reddened a little, while Dot turned abruptly away and made her adieux to Catherine and Hannah.

"Isn't she a dear?" sighed Polly, as she and Dot went down the walk. "I do think she's as charming as a picture in a sweet old-fashioned book, and I want to learn to read the printing that describes the picture."

"Well, you may for all of me," replied Dot. "But I don't believe I'd ever feel safe with her. I felt all hands and feet, and if she should ever kiss my hand!"

"She won't!" laughed Polly. "You needn't fear! I wonder how the boys will like her. She is unusually good-looking, and her clothes are delightful. And I like her eyes. There is fun in her somewhere. You mark my words, Dot Winthrop. Once she learns English, there'll be something doing. There's nothing colorless or monotonous about Frieda Lange."



CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CAUGHT IN A SHOWER

The three girls, "just the right number, one for each gable," as Dr. Harlow said, had been very busy that morning. Their beds made, Catherine had gone down to market, while Frieda dusted the living-room, and Hannah swept the porches.

"I like doing things like this," said Frieda suddenly, as she came to the doorway, and shook her duster energetically. "Do you remember the time we got our own supper in Berlin, Hannah?"

"Indeed I do," said Hannah heartily, leaning on her broom. "You look awfully pretty this morning, Frieda, in that plaid gingham. Are you going off with Polly, as usual? I don't see you at all, it seems to me."

"You have Catherine," answered Frieda. "Polly is learning German."

"And you are learning English. I can see that you have improved a lot this week. But you are getting pretty slangy. It would be better for you to learn from Catherine than from Polly."

Frieda shook her head firmly. "I am in awe of Catherine," she announced, "and with you I feel weary talking English, for I know you can talk German. But Polly cannot do any other, and I must talk with her. She is delightsome."

"So is Catherine," said Hannah, looking at Frieda wistfully. It was a worry to her that these two who were to be together all the next year should be so slow in getting acquainted. "One is obstinate and the other is shy, and I don't know when they will get over it," she sighed to herself, as Frieda, seeing Catherine come up the walk, disappeared into the house.

Catherine was breathless with her quick climb and her many parcels. She dropped into a chair on the porch, and took off her hat to fan herself.

"There is the funniest woman on the street," she said. "I know she is an agent, and I suppose she'll be here soon; but I've got to shell these peas and I want to do it out here, so I shan't run from her. Won't you bring out some pans for the peas when you take your broom in, Hannah? I'm too weary to move."

Hannah, on her way after pans, persuaded Frieda to come out and help shell peas, and all three were soon busily at work.

Suddenly Catherine snapped a pea at Hannah to attract her attention.

"My agent!" she whispered, as a woman in a loose flowing gown marched toward them.

She mounted the steps and, stooping over Catherine, snapped something around her neck.

"There!" she said, straightening herself. "That will never come off."

All three girls gasped. Catherine clutched at the offending article and the peas rolled in all directions.

"It's a collar," said the woman triumphantly. "You can wear it forever. Just put a fresh ribbon over it now and then, and you're always dressed. Only fifteen cents. I'll try one on you, Miss—" and before Hannah could utter a protest she was caught in the celluloid trap as Catherine had been. Speechless they faced each other. With a little gasp Frieda slipped over the porch railing and disappeared around the corner of the house. Hotspur came bounding after her and she patted him, and hugged him and laughed and laughed.

"A collar just like yours, Hotspur dear," she told him in German. "And it will never come off! Catherine, the Saint, the Perfect, the Inviolate, sitting there looking like a—in English, like an idiom! O, Hotspur, dear, it has done me good. I have wished I could want to laugh at her. Now I shan't be so afraid of her ever again. Come! we must go. It's time for our row." And Frieda danced off across a little wood path which was a short-cut to the boat-house.

Polly was waiting, and in a very few minutes the "Minnehaha" was launched. It was a beautiful day, the river rippling with waves and twinkling with reflections of trees, but the ardent oarswomen saw neither the beauty surrounding them nor the black clouds threatening. They were practising for a race. Neither spoke. They pulled with long steady strokes in perfect time. Suddenly Frieda's oar flopped and "caught a crab." The bow at the same moment struck the bank, and a great scrambling tearing sound followed. In a fright the girls huddled together in the bottom of the boat, not daring to look up.

"O, pshaw! It's only a cow, more afraid than we were. She made all that noise just tearing up the bank."

"I thought it was an earthshake," sighed Frieda, leaning back and resting. "That was one hundred strokes without missing. I didn't know the bank was so near."

"Neither did I. That's the trouble with us, Frieda. We get so interested in rowing that we forget to steer."

"We steered into a steer that time."

"O, Frieda! You ought not to be allowed to make jokes in English, you make such bad ones."

Frieda smiled cheerfully. "Ten days ago I thought I should never make a joke in any language, or laugh at one again. I was very sorrowful when I came here, Polly."

"I didn't dream it," answered Polly. "You looked very sweet when I first saw you, and I thought you kept still because you didn't care to talk! But we have had a lot of fun these days, haven't we? I feel as though I had known you a long time. Wish you were going to Wellesley."

"So do I. It would be delightful, with you there and Karl and Hannah so near. But my parents decided for me. Karl will go to see you, though."

"That's nice. Really, Frieda, you will find it's lots easier at a small college than a large one at first. And you can come on East afterward. Dexter is fine, and you'll have such a start, going in as Catherine's friend."

Frieda grimaced.

"If every one there is as beautiful and—apart as Catherine is, I shan't get on very well. Catherine is like a saint. She could never understand wickedness as you and Hannah do."

"Thanks very much!" Polly answered dryly. "But you take my word for it, Catherine isn't just a saint. There is fun in her, too, though not on the surface. You may always feel as though she were a beautiful picture or poem but you won't like her the less for that. She's not stand-offish. She's just different. My dear, I felt a drop."

"So did I. And there's another." Straightway the heavens opened and a deluge descended, most of it, it seemed, aiming for the small rowboat at the pasture's edge.

The thin roof of boughs which had hidden from their view the swiftly gathering clouds was wholly inadequate to the task of sheltering them from the contents of the clouds. Great cracks of lightning showed in the dark sky, and thunder rattled and roared and rumbled and burst.

Polly looked grave.

"We'll drown if we stay here, and we could never row home. Look at the waves! And if we stay here, we're also liable to be struck by lightning. Let's leave the boat and make for that farmhouse across the pasture."

"I'm afraider of the cow," said Frieda. "But I'll go. We can hide the oars and oar-locks in the bushes."

Progress across the pasture was difficult, but when the road beyond was reached, both looked aghast at the muddy stream of it.

Frieda rolled under the fence and stepped boldly in. Polly, gasping with laughter, started to climb over.

"You might as well roll," advised Frieda. "You can't wetten yourself more than you are already, and it is pleasant to roll."

"That's a matter of taste!" panted Polly, balancing herself on the top of the fence.

Suddenly Frieda gave a little shriek. Polly instantly fell forward into the mud, her skirt catching on all the barbs in the fence and rending itself horribly. Frieda, full of wild exclamations of pity and remorse, helped her up and wiped the thickest of the mud from her once piquant face.

"It was the cow," she confessed. "I saw him coming from afar and I squealed. I did not know it would make you tumble, but I had to squeal. I fear cows. I have great alarm before them."

"I forgive you," Polly was weak with mirth. "But we've got to get into that house and telephone for some one to come out from town and take us home. We could never walk in these roads, and I should tie myself all up in knots if I walked in this shredded skirt. One more little spurt, Frieda, and we're at the kitchen door!"

It looked for a minute as though they would never get beyond the door. The respectable lady who met them there was scarcely to blame if she judged a little by outward appearance. Polly's efforts to be suave were discounted by the muddy look of her eye, and the fact that water was dripping from her hair into her face.

"Won't you please let us come in and telephone for a carriage, and then wait for it?" she pleaded. "I will gladly pay for the use of the 'phone." Then it came over her sickeningly that she had no money with her.

"I'm Polly Osgood," she said. "My father is the Osgood of Osgood and Brown, Lawyers."

"You don't say! Come right in. I'm Amanda B. Mills, and Lawyer Osgood has been my counsel for twenty-one years and more. I'd never a-kept you waitin' out there a minute, if I'd known 'twas you. Is this your sister? Don't wipe your shoes. Come right in. There's other folks been caught in this rain, too."

She stepped back, still speaking, and invited them into the kitchen. Polly and Frieda, stumbling a little, blinded as they were by the water dripping from their hair, followed her. As they entered the room, there was a moment's silence, then a burst of laughter and exclamations.

"For the love of Mike!"

"Where did you rain down from?"

"O dear, O dear! You ridiculous boys!"

"What a guy you do look, Polly!"

And slowly out of the babel of voices came a deep solemn: "Donnerwetter!" It was not a lady-like expression for a nice little German girl to use, but she knew that to American ears it sounded more harmless than her usual expletives, and, besides, she felt that if ever an occasion had warranted emphasis this was it. She and Polly, dripping, draggled, ragged, confronted with Algernon, Max, Bert and Archie, almost as wet, grouped about Amanda B. Mills' kitchen stove!

Mrs. Mills' astonishment at the boisterous greeting given her latest guests by the earlier ones was so manifest that Polly hastened to make all clear with introductions.

"How do you happen to be here?" she asked, as she finished, and Archie had made a Chesterfieldian bow, though the blue from his Andover cap had run into his fair hair.

"Fishing," answered Bert. "We drove out from town with our old nag, hitched her to a tree and fished. Thunder and lightning always rile the beast, and she just broke her tie-strap and oozed off home, and left us in her wake. We got this far, walking, but the road was such a juicy mess we decided to stop and telephone for some one to come out after us."

"That's what I am going to do. Where is the telephone, Mrs. Mills?"

"O, do allow us to have the pleasure," begged Max. "They said they'd send out the 'light bearers' wagon,' and it's warranted to hold six. Besides it will be here in twenty minutes, and a private equipage would take longer."

"Well—it's awfully kind of you, I'm sure! Aren't you afraid we'll make you wetter, though, if we ride in the same carriage? I am flooding the floor at this moment. It's terrible, Mrs. Mills. Isn't there a shed we could go into, and not make such a lot of work for you?"

"Deary me, Miss Osgood, it's a pleasure to me to have you here. But I wisht you'd come into the parlor, all of you, you and your friends. I'll lay papers down on the carpet, and you can just walk in."

They all protested, but as it soon became clear that it was as much a desire to display the beauties of her room as hospitality that prompted the invitation, they yielded and filed damply along the newspaper path into the gaudy parlor. The rain had stopped as suddenly as it had come up, and the sun was shining through the flowers in the lace curtains at the windows, and striking the bright pink morning-glory of the graphophone, which was the most conspicuous object in the room. Mrs. Mills, preceding her wet guests, turned the track a little past the telephone, resplendent in oak and nickel, so that the whole procession could be inside the room at once. Then she called their respectful attention to her framed marriage certificate, and a similar document declaring the late Jacob Quincy Mills a Grand Something or Other in some lodge. Beneath these, on a shelf, were two tall lava jars filled with pampas grass, a pink china vase and a wreath of Easter lilies made of spangled paper.

"I'd like to show you the pictures in the family album," said Mrs. Mills hospitably, resting her hand upon the fat plush volume on the center table, "but I don't see how more'n two or three of you can look at it at a time." She frowned a moment, puzzled. Then her face lighted. "I'll just set the graphophone goin' for the rest of you to entertain yourselves with," she said eagerly, and in a moment the room was filled with the wheezing and strident strains of "You Look Good to Father," against which Mrs. Mills raised her own voice in explanatory remarks to Archie and Frieda, who happened to be within the album's range:

"This is Mr. Mills' sister's first husband. That was their baby that died. This here is Miss Evelyn Mills of Chicago. She's a singer there at the Orpheum. She was my husband's own cousin, once removed. This was my father's aunt,—" and so on.

"Look at Algernon," whispered Max to Polly. "He's as contented as a lamb. He's learning all there is to know about poultry, and doesn't even know that infernal machine is going or that Mr. Mills had any relatives." And sure enough Algernon, standing beside the bookcase, on a portion of the newspaper track, was reading, even devouring, the pages of a scientific farming journal, with an expression of perfect satisfaction on his face.

The long half hour came at last to an end. Mrs. Mills conducted the procession back to the kitchen, helped tuck the girls into the robes, and disclaiming all right to their earnest thanks, watched the wagon out of sight.

"Which is worse, a soaking or a fourth-class phonograph?" queried Archie from his corner.

Bert, humming "Waltz me Around Again, Willie," paused to remark:

"Why, I rather liked that. Didn't the rest of you?"

Polly shivered, not with cold alone.

"There is one song we all like, Bert," she suggested. "Let's sing it now to keep our lungs from freezing. There's water enough all about to make it appropriate!"

And in a minute four big male voices were shouting out the Boat Club song, Polly's soprano sweet and clear over the rest, while Frieda smiled encouragement over the edge of the robe in which she was wrapped to her chin.

"We are the Winsted Boat Club, Dip the oar, dip the oar! We are the Winsted Boat Club, Push out from shore!

"We are the Winsted Boat Club, Paddle light, paddle light! A-drifting, a-drifting beneath The sunset bright!"



CHAPTER FOURTEEN

AN INTERLUDE

Algernon suffered more serious consequences from his wetting than the others did from theirs. His cold the next day prevented him from even attempting to go to the library. He wrote a note to Bertha, asking her to take his place, and then, groaning over his inability to get to the telephone, coaxed Elsmere to his side and sewed the note and the key to his blouse.

"You cross your heart and hope to die you'll go straight to Bertha's and give her the key?"

"Cross my heart. Hope die. And you'll give me six candies and a rocking-horse, and a 'lectric light and a house for my pigeons, and—"

"I'll give you something nice when you've done the errand, not before. Now hurry. The library can't open till you get there. Think of it! All those people who want books waiting for you!" Coughing, Algernon fell back upon his hated pillows, and watched his messenger set out, more in hope than in confidence.

It was Fate that prevented Elsmere's fulfilling the trust, or rather, realizing the hope, for though he did go straight to Bertha's house, he did not find her there. The maid who opened the door proved uncommunicative on the subject of Bertha's whereabouts, and Elsmere sauntered away, undecided what to do next. Ten feet from the gate, he stumbled upon a cat. At once a beautiful thought came to him. His own cat-pussy had gone away, tired of abuse and starvation irregularly combined with affection in the form of embraces and sugar, and Elsmere's heart had grieved for her. Here was another, and he could find out by actual experiment whether the velvet birds in the library would deceive her. Clutching the spitting, clawing creature to his bosom, he trotted off to the library.

The door, of course, was locked. At first this fact discouraged Elsmere. Then he suddenly remembered that he alone possessed means of entrance. Putting the cat down on the pavement and stepping firmly on her tail to retain her, he fitted the key and triumphantly turned it in the lock.

Once inside, he carried kitty to the closet where the birds at present hung, but his experiment was unsatisfactory, for she dug into his cheek with a fury which rendered it necessary to abandon the attempt. When the outraged animal had fled down the street, Elsmere looked about for fresh interests. He was in a mood to recognize opportunities, and the unprotected condition of Algernon's desk was suggestive. Never was a librarian more hostile to little prying fingers than A. Swinburne of the Winsted City Library. Elsmere felt a certain constraint, even alone with opportunity.

The door opened and a very small person came in and walked over to the desk.

"What you want?" asked Elsmere gravely.

"Want a book."

"All right." Elsmere walked to the shelves, took down a large volume of Sheridan's Memoirs, and handed it to the child. Plainly much impressed by the size of her booty, she wrapped her arms about it and walked out, with admiring glances at Elsmere over her shoulder. Elsmere was pleased. That was easy. He climbed into Algernon's chair. There were plenty of things to amuse one. Rubber stamps hold infinite possibilities of entertainment. So do colored cards arranged in trays. Elsmere shifted them all about, and stamped the date on everything in sight.

Then came more Public, Mrs. Kittredge's maid this time, returning a book and not wishing more. In fact, she laid down the book and departed with such would-be inconspicuous swiftness that if Elsmere had been more experienced, he would have known at once that the book was overdue.

Then there was a lull. Even forbidden pleasure palls in time, if no one comes to remonstrate, and Elsmere was beginning to consider going home, when three boys, strolling that way, pressed their noses against the window-pane. Then they wandered in.

"What's the kid doin' in the liberrian's chair?" asked one. Elsmere maintained a dignified silence, stamping the date rapidly and inkily on a pile of fresh catalog cards.

"Say, kid, where's the liberrian?"

"I'm liberrian."

"O, come off. Where's the real one? The feller that knows it all, and walks like a seesaw."

"That's Algy," said Elsmere, with fraternal recognition. "Algy's sick. I'm liberrian."

His questioner looked at him keenly.

"I say, kids, let's us be liberrians. You put the little feller out."

The obedient henchmen put the howling Elsmere down from his seat, and exalted their chief.

"I'm it," said that worthy. "You pick out books you want, and I'll fix 'em up."

The others, nothing loath, picked out certain extra-illustrated volumes which Algernon did not allow to circulate, and presented them at the desk, where they helped the presiding official to "fix 'em up" according to methods suggested by intuition combined with a little observation.

"Say, now it's my turn," said one of the subordinates. "You git down and let me. Does that chair screw 'round?"

It did, and in the ensuing scuffle, it not only screwed around but the top fell off, carrying three boys and an assortment of inks with it.

At the same moment, Max and Archie entered to while away an idle half-hour with the daily paper.

The big boys were prompt, but the little boys were prompter. The back door swung on its hinges and Max and Archie, puffing, ejaculating and wrathful, gave over attempts at capture for efforts at repair, Max going off to hunt up Algernon, while Archie gathered up scattered cards and mopped up the ink with dust-cloths.

Seeking Algernon, Max ran across Mrs. Osgood making calls. Hearing his tale, she went back with him to the scene of disaster, and her capable fingers soon brought about some appearance of order, though the intricacies of card systems were beyond her.

"I'd like to know who the rascals are that did it," she said with emphasis; "and I can't see how they got in. Where do you suppose Algernon is?"

"He caught cold yesterday," Archie told her, "but it doesn't seem possible that he would send down anybody who would go off and leave the place open. I saw the little Weed boy, but I didn't know the other two. They lit out like lightning, and I didn't care to chase them all up Main Street. I was going to the Smiths' to have a cup of tea!" Archie looked ruefully at his soiled garments and dark blue hands. "I wonder if we couldn't get Bertha to come in here. She knows the ins and outs of all these fancy arrangements."

"Berfa isn't to home," remarked a clear sweet voice from the closet. "Fat's why I had to be liberrian!"

Max threw open the door. Elsmere, on the wood-box, was contentedly jiggling the velvet birds, which had been the first cause of all the excitement.

At the sight of Max's angry face, he jumped up. "I got to go," he said hastily. "I'm awful busy. Must find my cat-pussy. I losted her when she scratched me."

"Sensible cat," growled Archie, taking Elsmere by the collar. "I wish she had losted you. Here, Mrs. Osgood, this seems to be the key to the mystery. At least it's the key to something." He lifted the key dangling from Elsmere's blouse.

"Algy sewed it on me," explained the child.

Mrs. Osgood sighed. "So Algernon is sick, and he sent you after Bertha, and she wasn't at home. I see. Max, you and Archie needn't wait. I'll take the responsibility of closing the library for to-day, and I'd like a private talk with this young gentleman, if you are willing."

Elsmere's eyes brightened.

"Will you pank me?" he asked hopefully. "Dr. Helen pank me when I eat pills. So!" In his effort to illustrate, he bent so nearly double that he fell over on his nose, and set it bleeding. Max and Archie caught up their hats and fled, leaving Mrs. Osgood to act upon inspiration.

Half an hour later, having by strenuous effort regained something of their former freshness of appearance, the two boys dropped in upon the group on the Three Gables lawn. They stopped a minute to take in the details of the pretty picture. Under a great apple tree, Catherine had set her tea-table with its pretty accessories. In comfortable chairs about it, sat the Boat Club girls, embroidering soft colored things or simply "visiting." Frieda was telling a story, and the others were listening attentively as she stumbled a little now and then in her desire to express herself rapidly.

"And he was there in the water, all the above part of him, and I held his waist. I pulled greatly and in he came lickety split, and what do you think he said? 'I big fish, Frieda. Pull me in and fy me.'"

"That was Elsmere, I'll wager," cried Max, approaching with Archie and giving Catherine his hand. "I'm glad you were talking about him, Miss Frieda, for we're full of the subject. He never said the expected thing in his life. Drowning and spanking are what he needs; the only trouble is that he likes nothing better. But he's beaten his record to-day," and while Archie dropped upon a rug near Hotspur, and incidentally near Bess, who was prettier than ever, and working on an Andover pillow, Max received a cup of tea from Catherine's hands and told his story of the afternoon's episode to a deeply interested audience.

"Poor Algernon!" sighed Polly. "That will make him so much extra work, and he must have his patience tried by that dreadful baby all the time."

"Does no one punish Elsmere except the neighbors?" asked Frieda, whose opinion of the lawlessness of American children was being strengthened daily by Elsmere's performances. Winifred answered, laughing.

"His mother made up her mind to, once. She told me about it. She told him she would not be his mother that day for he had been so bad she was ashamed to own him. Some one had told her that was a sure way to crush a child. But Elsmere was only interested. He called her 'Mamma' and 'Mummy dear' to catch her napping, but she wouldn't answer. By and by a caller came in, and Elsmere walked up to her and pointed at his mother and said: 'This isn't my mother. She is just Mrs. Swinburne, but I love her!' And Mrs. Swinburne picked him up and kissed him and cried, and I don't believe she ever tried again to make him mind."

"I'm glad Perdita and Peter are such a biddable sort," said Polly. "I don't know what we'd do with two little imps around. They are quite good, almost always. Perdita is mischievous, but Peter keeps her straight. He seems to feel the whole burden of her. If she starts to do anything naughty, he says: 'Perdita, you mustn't,' and Perdita doesn't."

"It's lucky Perdita hasn't Elsmere for a brother," suggested Dot. "There'd be no living in Winsted if she had, for even Peter can't keep a wicked look out of her eye at times."

"Room for a tired man in your party, children?" Dr. Harlow joined the group. Max vacated the long chair he was occupying, and every one welcomed the doctor with a word or smile. They all loved him, and nothing pleased them better than to have him spend an hour with them. To-day, he was plainly tired, and while Catherine prepared tea for him, Frieda whispered to Hannah.

"I wonder if he would," said Hannah. "Winifred, will you sing, if I bring out my fiddle?"



Winifred never refused to sing, and Hannah slipped into the house, tuned her dear Geige and brought it out. Then she played very softly, while Winifred's sweet voice sang one quiet song after another. Dr. Harlow's tired face relaxed and, leaning back in the chair, he presently dropped off to sleep. The young people were very still, and Winifred smiled softly as she sang. Dr. Helen, coming out from the office after an interview with a wearying patient, stood in her turn watching. The blues and pinks and greens of the girls' frocks, the boys' white flannels and the great tree spreading above them, made a pretty background and setting for the central group of Hannah bending her brown head earnestly over her violin, and Winifred lifting her delicate little face while she sang.

"Bravo!" shouted a big voice behind Dr. Helen. Bert, on his way home from one of his spasmodic "jobs," dropped in to say "Hello!" and incidentally break the spell. Dr. Harlow woke and looked guiltily about him. His wife joined him, and Max and Archie shook the kinks out of their long legs, as the girls began to gather up their sewing and flutter about Catherine with good-bys.

"I say, Miss Hannah," said Bert, making his way to her. "I didn't know you played. That's a jolly little fiddle you've got there. Do you know the Merry Widow waltzes?"

Hannah laughed. "I don't," she confessed, "but perhaps I could learn them. Bring them up some time and I'll try."



CHAPTER FIFTEEN

SUNDAY SCHOOL

"Hannah, are you awake?"

Hannah turned over, and opened an eye uncertainly.

"No, I guess so."

"Well, do wake up and look at me. Isn't it awful?"

Hannah unscrewed the other eye, and blinked blindly for a minute.

"What is it?" she asked, yawning.

"My cheek. Can't you see? Toothache. It's all swollen up, and it hurts."

Hannah roused herself a little more, then shut her eyes quickly. She didn't want to laugh at Catherine.

"Can't you do anything for it?"

"I suppose so, but it won't go down in time for Sunday-school, and who will take my class?"

Hannah groaned. "Who would ever get up in the middle of the night and worry about a Sunday-school class, when they had a toothache? It's unnormal! Go back to bed, unless there is something I can do for you. Can't I call your mother?"

"No, there's no use bothering her. I know what to do well enough, but I am so worried about the class."

"O, go along to sleep. I'll take your old class."

Hannah was asleep herself before Catherine had finished sighing with grateful relief and returned to her own room.

An hour later, Hannah woke with a start to the consciousness that something unpleasant had happened. Almost immediately that vagueness gave way to irritating clearness. She got up and peeped into Catherine's room. She was sleeping, but the swollen cheek left no room for hope that the whole episode was a nightmare. Hannah dressed quietly, frowning the while at her unconsidered offer of the early morning.

"I do think this town would be twice as nice if there weren't any children in it. They spoil everything. I never taught anybody anything in all my life. And I never went to Sunday-school either, except in Germany. She will just have to get some one else," she fussed. "A promise like that doesn't count. I was so sleepy I didn't know what I was saying."

With unwelcome plainness she recalled the facts that Dorcas and Polly had classes of their own, Bertha and Agnes were out of town, and Dot and Win and Bess belonged to another denomination.

"Why couldn't she have waited till Alice came? She's always ready for things like that. O, dear. I suppose I'll have to try. Catherine would keep a promise herself, if she made it in delirium tremens!"

She stole down stairs before any one was stirring, save Inga in the kitchen, found a Bible and took it over to the window-seat, where she opened it gingerly.

"I wonder where they begin," she thought. "Might as well look Genesis over first, to refresh my memory." She spread the thin pages open, and began to read. Outside the open window the birds were noisily celebrating the sunny morning. Inga ground the coffee. A bell rang for early service somewhere. Hannah's eyes wandered from the page.

"'And there was evening and there was morning, a second day.' It sounds just like poetry," she thought. "But what could I tell youngsters about it? They would be sure to want to know just how the waters were kept off the firmaments. I hope—no, I know, Elsmere is in that class!" In silent horror, Hannah sat staring out of the window. Memories of Catherine's Sunday dinner talk swarmed back into her mind. She had thought the stories amusing: how Elsmere had chewed gum and put it into the collection envelope; how Perdita Osgood had described in vivid detail her seasickness of a summer before; how the little Hamilton girl had asked personal and embarrassing questions of Catherine herself. It had sounded funny, when Catherine told the tales in her quiet way,—but to be alone with them for an hour! Hannah's heart failed her entirely. She shut the Bible and marched up to Catherine's room. Catherine was dressing, as far away from the mirror as possible.

"Hannah, dear," she called, seeing the brown hair and blue eyes through a crack in the door. "Do come in. You don't know what a dear you were to take that class. I went straight to sleep, and didn't mind the pain nearly so much after that. It worried me so. You see, the Sunday-school is so small and I had been over and over it in my mind, and couldn't think of any one who would do. It's the last class any one is ever willing to take."

"Why?" asked Hannah, her prepared refusal suspended.

"O, because it's so big, and there are all ages of little people in it. But you'll do beautifully. Children always love you. Do you know what the lesson is?"

Hannah hesitated. Then a glance at Catherine's distorted face made her ashamed of herself, and she answered bravely:

"No. What is it? I'll have to study up a lot."

"You'll find plenty of material in those leaflets and books in the pile there on the table by my Bible. It's about the Good Shepherd. And if you're going down, will you ask mother to come in before breakfast? I don't believe I've been doing the right things."

So Hannah, laden with Helps and Hints, went slowly down stairs again, and after having sent Dr. Helen up to see her afflicted daughter, resumed her place in the window-seat and put her mind resolutely on the subject of the lesson.

"'Bring in the 23rd Psalm,'" she read in one suggestion. "That's good. I know that much and I can make them repeat it the whole hour, if nothing else comes into my head. How is she, Dr. Helen?"

Dr. Helen smiled ruefully. "She will be all right after a while, but it is a pity, isn't it? You were a good girl to relieve her mind about that class. She cares so much about it. Good morning, Frieda! Hast du gut geschlafen?"

The Three Gables household was a church-going one. Hannah, in her white gown with sweet-peas scattered over it, met the doctors in the hall.

"Is Frieda late?" she asked, putting on her gloves. "It isn't like her."

"No, but she begged so hard to stay with Catherine whose state seems to waken deeps of pity in her, that I couldn't refuse. She said she would do anything for her, even to reading poetry!"

They all laughed, for Frieda's English reading was distinctly lacking in smoothness, and her rendering of poetry would doubtless be harrowing.

"That would hurt Catherine more than the toothache," said Hannah, "but they will find something better to do," and she walked sedately down the path between the doctors, her Bible and Quarterly in her hands, wondering if martyrs on the way to the stake chatted on indifferent topics, and noticed birds and bees and grasshoppers.

Meanwhile Catherine and Frieda up stairs were surprising themselves and each other. The first glimpse of Catherine's swollen cheek had roused Frieda's sense of mirth, but compassion for physical pain followed quickly.

"Ach weh! Weh! Schade! Schade!" she had murmured in a deep sympathetic tone, which Catherine found unexpectedly soothing. Accustomed as she had always been to brisk remedial measures, and beyond those, to wordless pity and a deliberate ignoring of the evil, she was interested and touched by this demonstration. She had felt shy with Frieda from the first, wishing so earnestly to know her well and win her love that she could not be perfectly simple and natural with her. This shyness had combined with the little aloofness, which every one felt in Catherine, to shut Frieda's heart. But this morning the barriers were down. Catherine, instead of being perfect, exquisite, was nothing short of hideous. The agent had proved that she could look absurd. Here she was shown mortal to the point of needing help from Frieda. What made Hannah feel awkward and useless, caused Frieda to come to the front, competent and tender. She made Catherine cozy with pillows, and sat beside her, speaking, in tones which carried healing and comfort, of all sorts of interesting and delightful things and places. She told stories of her school in Germany, of her home and Hannah's visit, of her little friend who had been to a birthday party at the palace, of the strange "church social" to which Hannah had taken her in Berlin, of her rides with Herr Karl in the Tiergarten, rapturous descriptions of the Tiergarten itself, dropping unconsciously into German phrases, her eyes shining and her cheeks taking on an unwontedly charming color, while Catherine lay and listened, entranced, as though she were in a world where pain had no power.

It was not so pleasant at the little gray church. Hannah, all through the sermon, wrestled mentally with the parable. It seemed to her it was a very slippery parable! She would no sooner highly resolve to hold it till she had wrenched its moral from it, and reduced that moral to terms which the youngest babe could surely comprehend, than she would find that the elusive subject had slipped from her grasp, and her whole mind would be fixed upon the problem of how long it would take a fly to crawl all the way across the expansive back of Mrs. Graham, who sat in the pew in front.

She went through the service like a well-constructed automaton, rising, sitting, singing even, with no notion of what she was doing or why she was doing it. She bowed her head with the others for the benediction, and then the soft stirring and cheerful tones of greeting about her, told her that her hour was come.

The superintendent directed her to "Miss Smith's class." To her final dismay, she found that that meant a seat on the platform in full view of the congregation. The little church was barely more than a chapel, and the chorus choir had two pews upon the platform. Here, it seemed, for purposes of segregation, Catherine held her flock during the interminable opening exercises, after which she led them to their own room in the basement. As one in a dream, Hannah went to the seat pointed out to her. Margaret Kittredge and Peter and Perdita were already present. The little Hamilton girl came in with two unknown others. Then more and more. The little girls settled themselves fussily, getting up frequently to crush their stiff starchy skirts into place. Their wide-brimmed hats interfered when they moved and they were never still. The little boys huddled together, and punched each other without motive, crowding each other off the seat, and showing the pennies they held in their moist little palms.

The superintendent tapped his bell. The noisy groups of the Sunday-school at large lapsed into an approach to order, the teachers staring consciously ahead with an excess of propriety, and the children alertly refraining from anything more riotous than fumbling with hymn-books. Hannah's own charges felt the change in the atmosphere, and quietness fell upon them. She welcomed it gratefully, aware that it was in no wise due to her own effort, and spreading a hymn-book open for the first song, stooped to allow the small boy next her to look on, then lent her voice as freely as she could to the chirping chorus. As the exercises continued, she became rather more accustomed to her prominent seat, and, inspired by Dorcas Morehouse's austere countenance in the front row below her, she even turned once and looked down the squirming row beside her, shaking her head gravely at Perdita, who was showing signs of uprising. Peter caught the look of reproach and passed it on to his twin with interest, hauling her into her place with a tug which resulted in a loud parting of gathers. The Bible reading over, "birthdays" were called for, and the little Hamilton girl trotted importantly forward to the superintendent's table, where she let seven pennies drop from her fat fingers into a yawning frog, receiving in exchange a printed text. Acknowledging this courtesy with a jerky bow, she switched her way back to the pew she had left, and crumpled herself into a space not half wide enough to hold her. The minister rose to lead in prayer. Hannah bowed her head devoutly, trusting in the power of example. She was conscious of the heavy breathing of Margaret beside her, due to the unwonted strain of pressing her chin close to her chest. The minister's voice droned on and on, but Hannah was sending up a fervent petition of her own, and for a brief space heard nothing. Then—Bang! "I want to sit by Her." There was a thud of falling bodies, and Elsmere, late but ardent, plumped himself into the place at Hannah's right, from which he had forcibly removed a little boy with fat red legs, which were now waving in the air. Hannah felt herself as red as the evicted legs, and as the prayer came to an abrupt stop, would have given worlds to be able to flee and hide her mortified face.

At a tap from the bell in the superintendent's hand, the class slipped to the floor, shook out its skirts and grasped its caps. The organ started up wheezily, and every one burst into song: "See the mighty host advancing, Satan leading on!" as Hannah, heading the wiggling line of wandering-eyed children, got somehow off the platform and into a little basement room which had been equipped for primary work with chairs of varying heights, a great colored chart and a mission map.

There she breathed more freely. Whatever the next half-hour had in store for her, she would at least be alone with it. These fifteen wigglers had become part of her. She must blush for them as for herself, but they were not onlookers, anyhow. The mere absence of Dorcas' gaze was refreshment.

There was a brief period of settling into chairs, some mild squabbling over two desirable blue ones, a little dispute as to the privilege of passing the envelope, and at last Hannah found that something definite was expected of her. The chart showed a brightly-colored shepherd holding in his arms a weak lamb.

"Say, won't that lamb kick him? They're awful leggy," suggested an interested youth in the first row.

"I seen a lamb onct," announced his neighbor, rocking perilously on the two back legs of her chair. "It was a ram lamb and it butted me in my stomach, it did. Hurt. Hurt awful."

"Huh!" grunted Perdita. "I don't believe it hurt as much as when my mother sewed my finger in the sewing-machine. Did your stomach bleed?"

"Children," said Hannah desperately. "Don't talk, please. No, Peter, not another word from anybody. Now who can tell the Golden Text?"

Dead silence.

"Doesn't any one know the Golden Text?"

"Miss Smith doesn't do that way," suggested some one. "She always says: 'Peter, you may tell us the Golden Text.'"

"Very well," agreed Hannah hurriedly. "Peter, you may tell us the Golden Text."

"Let me," cried Elsmere. "I know 'bout lambs. Mary had a little lamb, fleeciswhitissnow."

"Elsmere," said Hannah sternly. "I asked Peter to tell us the Golden Text."

"Mine is a walker," said Peter loudly.

Hannah looked mystified.

"Pooh!" remarked the Hamilton girl loftily. "That ain't this Sunday's. 'Wine is a mocker' was to-morrow's. 'Tain't this Sunday's."

"What is this Sunday's?" asked Hannah hopefully. "Doesn't anybody know? 'I am'—don't you remember? 'I am the good—':

"I am the good—" Peter got so far and then stopped, stolid.

"I know," cried Elsmere once more. "Put in his thumb, pull out a plum, good boy am I!"

The others snickered, and Hannah bit her lip. "No. 'I am the good shepherd.' It was Jesus who said it. Now all of you say it together."

Lamblike, they followed her lead, and she succeeded in passing over several minutes. But they soon grew restive again, and one little hand pawed the air.

"Well, what is it?"

"The Grahams is coming to our house to dinner."

"That's nice. Now we will talk about the shepherd psalm. How many of you know it?"

There was a moment of doubt. "Shall not want?" ventured one of the older ones presently.

"Yes, that's it exactly," said Hannah gladly. "You've all heard it lots of times. Now I'll recite it for you, and then you can tell me what it means."

With the Bible prudently open to save her from any possible embarrassment at a sudden lapse of memory, she began slowly to recite the psalm, pausing for explanatory comments as she went along.

"I was in a valley onct," said a sleepy boy, who had contributed nothing so far to the morning's entertainment. "I fell off'n the dock and the boat was clost up to me, and that was a valley."

"How'd you get out?" asked several with interest.

"Man pulled me out," and the speaker subsided.

Hannah stole a glance at her watch, as she finished the psalm. She had strung it out as long as she could, but there were still several minutes to dispose of.

"Now I wonder who can tell me what that was all about?" she asked, with feigned sprightliness. "I think you can, the little girl with the red dress. What's your name? O, yes, Gwendolen."

Every one turned to look at Gwendolen. She stuck her finger in her mouth, presumably to stem the tide of speech, for as she withdrew it the words fell out over one another all in one breath.

"Don't want anyfing to eat. Lay down in the grass an' roll. Put kerosene on my head. Can't git any more in my cup, all spillin' over."

The door opened and once more the superintendent tapped his bell. Hannah, with a deep sigh of thankfulness, marshalled her troop and drove them back to their place, taking her martyr's seat in their midst.

Through the reading of the secretary's report and the singing of three stanzas of the closing hymn, they behaved fairly well, subdued by the drowsy atmosphere of air unchanged since the morning service. The last stanza of the hymn was nearly sung. Elsmere rose to his feet and plucked Peter by the hair of his head. Hannah cast an appealing glance at the superintendent, who was nearer the offender than herself. He took a quick stride forward, with his hand uplifted, just as the last wailing sound of the hymn died away. His hand on Elsmere's collar, he observed the congregation standing with bowed heads. They had misinterpreted his gesture. Casting a look of understanding at Hannah, gripping Elsmere tightly, he pronounced the expected benediction, and as the audience broke up into home-going groups, set the boy down with emphasis.

"We don't usually close with a prayer," he said to Hannah, "but they thought that was what I meant, when I stepped forward. I nearly throttled the child but—"

"I think you will be forgiven," said Hannah firmly. "Miss Smith will be here next Sunday, but I, I am thankful to say, shall not!"



PART THREE

TOGETHER AT LAST



CHAPTER SIXTEEN

ALICE ON THE WAY

Out on a Dakota prairie, in a corner of a motionless Pullman sat a short girl in a plain blue suit, her grey eyes behind thick glasses bent upon the pages of a red leather book.

"'Beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.'" She read the words over and over, and the book fell from her hands as she looked out on the limitless fields. "'Beauty for ashes.' What a striking way of putting it! 'The oil of joy'—why, I wonder what we are stopping here so long for. It doesn't look like a station."

And suddenly Alice Prescott sat up straight and looked about her, alert and alive.

The porter came slowly in response to her repeated ring. "What's the matter? Why, there's an engine off the track a little ways off, and our crew and engine has gone to help. No, nobody hurt. Just a freight engine. Don't know how long. Mebbe one hour. Mebbe two."

"But I'll miss my connections!"

"Too bad, Miss." The porter looked at her with lazy curiosity. The train had already been at a standstill for ten minutes, and every other woman on the car had put him through a catechism long ago. This girl looked awake and practical. How could a porter understand that the mere beauty of words and ideas could render one unconscious to delays in transportation?

Alice rose and walked up and down the aisle. Three women, rather overdressed, were playing cards in a remote section. A man slept in a corner. She went to the door, and seeing groups of passengers standing outside along the track, jumped down from the high step and walked a little, tasting the fresh air with pleasure. The country offered nothing to her gaze. Her eye, accustomed to mountains, found endless level stretches harrowing rather than soothing. She recalled a Dakota girl at Dexter who was always telling of the beauty of the prairie, and longing for it. "I suppose it's a matter of habit," she thought to herself. "There is certainly something that kindles your imagination in such a sight. It would be dreary if it weren't cultivated, but it must be wonderful to see a whole country reclaimed from wildness and made productive. 'Beauty for ashes' O!" and with a little shiver of pleasure, she repeated the lines that had so charmed her a few minutes before. "'The spirit of heaviness.' What a strange thing to include in the same message with the vengeance of the Lord! It makes blues and dullness seem so important. It doesn't say anything here about Christ's coming to heal bodily suffering or sin, and it does explicitly say he is to cure the blues. Isn't that interesting?"

Her walk had brought her to the first of the line of day-coaches by this time, and she glanced up at the listless faces leaned against the dirty window-panes. As she passed, each pair of eyes rested wearily on her figure. Suddenly a thought struck her. Blues and dullness! Where were they ever more to the fore than here? She entered the car impulsively and stood looking people over. She spoke to the nearest woman.

"It's a nuisance having to wait so, isn't it? Wouldn't you like to come out for a little walk?"

"No," snapped the woman, "I wouldn't." Alice flushed, then smiled and went on down the aisle. Evidently her mission of good fairy was not going to be successful at the start. "Some people want to be 'heavy,'" she thought. "I'll take some one who looks as though she wanted to be lightened up. Here's one."

The red-eyed cindery young woman who was curled up in her seat, dabbing her cheeks with a smeary handkerchief, looked as though any change would be a welcome one. Alice stopped resolutely. "Can I do anything for you?" she asked, not at all sure of her reception.

The girl lifted her eyes and swallowed a sob. "Nobud-d-dy can," she wailed; "I'm going to be m-m-married!"

Alice's face twitched. "Won't you tell me about it?" she asked. "Cheering folks up" was proving an intricate business. "If the garment of praise doesn't fit any one," she thought, "I'll just have to carry it back and wear it myself."

The bride gulped and spoke again:

"It's to be to-night and I've missed my train at the Junction already, and I don't know what to do. Everybody was invited and the supper won't keep, and I lost my solid silver hatpin, anyway."

"Can't you come out and walk with me?" suggested Alice. "The air will make you feel better. Bathe your eyes and come."

Still tearful, but manifestly a little relieved, the bride obeyed and, once out on the prairie, poured forth her tale. She had at the last moment decided she could not bear to be married without a veil, and had gone early in the morning to the nearest town to invest her last money in that frivolity. Fate was against her, however, for there were no veils in the shops, and a persuasive milliner had induced her to give up her cherished notion and buy a hat instead. "And I'm most sure the ribbon's cotton-back," she sighed. "I don't know why I bought it, anyway. That's always the way with me. I think I know what I'll get, and then they coax me into getting something different. Once I went down town to buy me a pair of black stockings, and I got an Alice blue silk waist, instead. Stephen he thinks it's funny and he says he'll see to the shopping when we're married. I wisht he'd come to-day."

"Wouldn't it be fun if he had?" said Alice. "There is a minister on the train, and we could have had a lovely wedding out here!"

This romantic idea cheered them both for a time, but its power was brief. There were signs of a tear-shower imminent, and Alice was at her wits' end for devices to adjust that garment of praise to fit.

Then came a great inspiration. "Let's walk to the Junction," she exclaimed. "I'll go with you, and you can get a team there, and drive home."

"But you'd miss your train."

"O, no, I wouldn't. It has to come right along there behind us, and I could jump on the cow-catcher if it came; but it can't come without an engine, and there isn't one in sight, and it's only two miles to your Junction, you say. That won't be anything of a walk. Go and get your hat-box."

The hat-box was not all. Though the journey was to be only a short one, the bride had taken a satchel with her of a type Alice especially loathed. This was a trifle, however, to a spirit so bent on adventure, and Alice seized the "grip" and started off at a brisk pace.

"I can't walk so fast," said the bride fretfully. "My shoes hurt."

Alice looked from her own broad-soled street shoes to the high-heeled, misshapen things on her companion's feet. The latter looked at them, too, with pride and affection. "I'm going to wear them at the wedding and I thought that, being they was so tight, I'd best break 'em in a little first."

"I see," and Alice moderated her own pace to the hobbling gait of the wedding slippers. Two miles seemed more of an undertaking now and she began to wonder if she had been rash in her suggestion. "I'll carry it through," she said to herself. "I know I can, and I won't back down. We'll get tired if we keep going without rests," she said aloud. "So let's walk ten minutes and then rest. You can tell by your watch."

The bride brightened at the allusion to the great plated and chased timepiece suspended from a rhinestone dove very near to her breast-bone. "Steve give me that when we was first engaged," she explained, and Alice smiled indulgently. "He give me my bracelet for Christmas, and all his friends give me bangles." She jingled the thing proudly as she spoke. "There's thirty-four of 'em."

"Thirty-four friends! He must be a popular man!" said Alice.

"O, he is, awful. And he's the handsomest! You just ought to see him."

"The garment of praise is settling into place without a wrinkle," thought Alice. "I hope she won't take it all, for I may need a corner of it myself, to console me for this abominable bag, and the tinkle of that bracelet. I suppose she would think it was finer than the jade one Mrs. Langdon gave me. And I wonder what she would think if she knew my necklace was under my dress, so it wouldn't show in travelling. O, well, she's a nice little thing, and I hope Steve will be good to her."

"I'm afraid you'll be all beat out helping me," said the bride remorsefully, as they paused once more for a rest. "I don't know how I'll ever thank you, anyhow."

"O, that's all right," and Alice seized the bag and bore it mightily forward.

"O, dear," sighed the bride presently. "There's somebody driving this way. I wish they was going the other, and would give us a lift."

The black speck down the road, which here ran alongside the track, expanded rapidly, developing into a smart buggy with two good horses, and a man driving. He leaned forward as he neared them, and suddenly reined in the horses with a jerk.

"Great Guns!" he shouted, throwing the reins over the dashboard, and leaping out over the wheel.

"It's Steve," cried the bride in a rapture, and Alice pinched herself with delight as Steve embraced his lady.

"However in the world did you get off here?" he asked, releasing her enough to reply.

"How did you?" she answered, and he laughed, "O, I thought I'd drive over to the Junction to meet you and carry you home, and I heard about the train being stalled out here and couldn't get out for hours, so I drove on, that's all. But the idea of you hoofing it in!" He put his head back and laughed loudly.

His fiancee then remembered Alice and introduced her, telling Steve of her kind interest. He was all cordiality, and offered to give her a ride back to the train.

"No, no," she protested. "I love to walk. And do hurry along home and have the wedding. I'm so glad it all turned out all right; and you're feeling happier, aren't you?" she asked the girl.

Steve put his arm around his little bride gently. "I guess she won't ever feel bad again. I shan't let her go off alone any more. And thank you for what you done. I shan't forget it. Say, couldn't you stop off now for the wedding?"

"O, do," begged the bride, and Alice had to refuse tenderly. She watched them get into the buggy, and drive happily away, waving to her as they did so. Then she turned back to her train, and her own car.

One of the card-playing women was tired and inclined to be sociable. So Alice sat with her, by invitation, and listened to the history of her family's diseases and operations, and her difficulties with servants, till the train was started once more and the rumble of the cars resumed their interrupted song of "Getting nearer, getting nearer."

"I must hear it that way every minute," Alice thought, as she took her own seat again, and while the lamps were lighted, watched in the windows not the rushing landscape but her own face. "It would be so easy to hear 'Getting farther,' and think of leaving home for nine whole months, but I'll just remember Hannah and Catherine and Frieda and dear Dexter,—and that will keep the garment from slipping off my shoulders."



CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

FINDING A VOCATION

On the second afternoon after Alice's arrival, the four girls walked down to the post-office to mail their letters, Catherine having written to Miss Lyndesay, while the other three wrote to their mothers. Now, pleasantly conscious of duty performed, they strolled idly along the street.

It was "library afternoon" and Catherine had a book to exchange for a busy neighbor, who much enjoyed the library privileges, but seldom had time to choose her own books. The girls turned in at the library door, which was hospitably open. Several people were waiting at the desk, while Algernon busily attended to their wants. Catherine laid down her book and went over to the fiction shelves to find something to take its place. The other girls wandered about, looking at the soldierly rows of books, and at the effective picture bulletin which Bess had made to celebrate the Fourth of July, a list of patriotic books under crossed flags,—turned the pages of the half dozen magazines on the reading-table, and then, by common consent gathered in the little alcove devoted to children's books.

"Three copies of Alice in Wonderland!" exclaimed Alice. "That seems a rather large proportion!"

Catherine, who had secured Friendship Village, and was rejoicing in her good fortune, answered the criticism.

"You see, each member of the club selected a book for the first order, and Dot and Max both chose Alice and neither would give up, so we finally ordered two; and then somebody gave us a copy afterward."

"What did you choose?"

Catherine laughed. "Can't you guess?"

Hannah pounced on a big copy of Pyle's Robin Hood.

"This, of course. Do you remember how you gave it to me to read the first evening I was at your house?"

Frieda had been looking the shelves over as if seeking something, and now straightened up, disappointed.

"Nowhere is there the Laetus Sorte Mea book," she said sadly.

"That's so!" exclaimed Catherine, regretfully. "We'll put it on the suggestion list at once. Do you see any other lack, any of you?"

They all laughed, looking about at the few hundred volumes on the shelves, but Frieda said earnestly:

"There are many Germans here, Dr. Harlow told me. And the older ones cannot read English. Can they have no share in the library?"

"That's right," said Alice. "They are taxpayers and I should think you ought to get a few German books every year, Catherine. It's done in other places."

Algernon was at liberty for a moment, and came over to the group.

"Are we talking too much?" asked Catherine.

"No, no. There's no one at the reading-table. What are you discussing?"

"Frieda thinks there should be German books here for the people in town who can't read English."

"There ought," said Algernon gravely. "But I don't know what to order. I don't want to start out with Goethe and Schiller. I asked the German minister, and he gave a list of religious books, but that isn't what we want, either."

Frieda's eyes shone. "Please let me make you a list," she said eagerly. "And I have two or three books in my trunk which I would gladly give, O, gladly."

Algernon's pleasure was as great as her own.

"That would be simply bully! We can order one each time we send for new books, and it won't be long before we have a good supply. I say, Catherine, would you mind taking the desk for a few minutes? There come the program committee of the Study Club, and I ought to be free to talk with them."

Catherine consented willingly, always liking to manipulate the simple machinery of the loan desk. Frieda sat down at once with a pencil and paper to make out her list, and Alice and Hannah helped themselves to magazines and waited.

Catherine looked about her at the little room and her heart swelled with pride and pleasure. So much had come of her thought of making Algernon useful. He was already quite a different person, with a dignity that became him well. The pile of cards in the charging tray before her showed that the library was being used by a goodly number of borrowers. The program committee was evidence that part, at least, of its use, was for more than mere recreation.

"O, I am so glad, so glad!" sang Catherine's heart. "There are so many things to be glad about. And see my dear, dear Wide-Awakes. I think they really are the most beautiful girls I ever beheld!"

A stranger might have thought that rather an extravagant speech, for Catherine herself was the only one of the four who could be called beautiful. But Frieda's face was unusual and interesting, Alice's sweet, though plain, and Hannah's the sort that always called for a second glance and a smile of pleasure.

"Have you anything in the library on the Past, the Present and the Future?" asked a voice, and Catherine stopped her musing.

"The what?" she asked, not believing her ears. She had been thinking of the past, the present and the future as she watched her three friends' faces, but that was quite a different matter.

"I have to write a paper on that subject," said a complacent young woman, rather showily dressed, "and I thought I'd maybe better read up on it a little."

"I should think it would be wise," murmured Catherine. "But I hardly know—the Past, the Present, and the Future of what?"

"Why, not of anything. Just the Past, the Present and the Future," said the other, with a shade of impatience in her tone. "Maybe I'd better wait till the real librarian is at liberty. He always knows what to give out."

"Perhaps that would be best," faltered Catherine. "It is such a very large subject, you know."

"Yes, that's why I chose it. I like a large subject. There is so much more to say on it. I wrote on 'Woman' last year, but it wasn't broad enough!"

A little girl, who came in wanting a fairy story, gave Catherine a chance to turn away and hide her amusement. The child wanted to know what the story was about, and before Catherine realized what she was doing, she had her arm about the little girl's waist, and, kneeling beside the low table, was showing her the pictures in a beautiful illustrated Tanglewood Tales, telling the story of Persephone as that sweet sad tale has seldom been told.

Some one came in and wanted a book, but Catherine did not know it. Alice, who had had some library experience at college, stepped quietly to the desk and served the customer. Hannah dropped her magazine and stole nearer the alcove, listening to the story. Frieda looked up from her writing, as Catherine's voice, full of wistfulness, came to her ear:

"And Mother Ceres wandered and wandered over the face of the earth, but there was not any Persephone anywhere. And the grass forgot to grow, and the flowers forgot to blossom, and the wheat withered and died, for Mother Ceres' heart was broken. How could she care for other things, when Persephone was gone?"

The members of the program committee, one by one, paused in their busy searching through Poole's Index, and waited while the sweet voice went on:

"And poor little Persephone was lonely down in the dark king's palace underground. She pined and pined, and would not eat or be comforted. And the poor King was sad, too. He wanted a little girl so badly, you know, and now that he had found one, he could not make her happy. It is a terrible thing not to be able to make people happy!"

The little girl cuddling close to Catherine, her eyes turning only from the pictured page to Catherine's face, sighed softly.

Algernon, watching and listening to the story of the tempting pomegranate, suddenly drew a deep breath, and his face lighted up as it always did when a new idea came to him.

"And then Quicksilver hurried her away, past the fierce dog with the three terrible heads, and up to the world again. Such a dry parched world! Not any green grass, not a single, flower. Not a single corn-stalk or spear of wheat. And poor old Mother Ceres sitting at home on her door-step, weary and sad and hopeless, wishing for her own little girl. And what do you think? As Persephone and Quicksilver walked along, pretty fast, you may be sure, for you can think how eager the little girl was to see her dear mother again, all along the sides of the path where they walked, the grass turned green and the flowers began to blossom and nod, and the corn-stalks lifted up their heads and waved new tassels, and the wheat sprang up, and the trees put out fresh leaves, and the birds sang, and the little dried-up brooks began to run and ripple over stones. And Mother Ceres, sitting and looking out over the dry brown world, suddenly saw a green glow over everything and she stood up, very angry, and said: 'Does the earth disobey me? I said that if the earth should ever grow green again, it should be along the path by which my daughter should come back to my arms.'

"And then a sweet child voice said: 'Open your arms, dear Mother, for I have come back to you, and all the earth is green and blossoming!'"

The little girl threw her arms around Catherine's neck and kissed her.

"O, I'm so glad she came back," she cried. "Tell me about it again."

Catherine smiled but her eyes were dreamy still. Algernon made his way over to her.

"You found my vocation for me," he said eagerly, "and now I've found yours. We'll have a story-hour in this library hereafter,—with bars up to keep the grown-ups out! You're better than the professional I heard at Madison."

Catherine looked bewildered, but Alice took her hand and squeezed it.

"I knew you could. I heard you once 'telling' to Jonathan Edwards out under the hemlocks when you thought no one else was listening. It's a glorious gift, dear, and I feel sure you'll do wonders with it some day. See! Hannah and Frieda are almost crying! Come on, girls. She doesn't even know what she has done. We'll have to take her home and have her mother explain it!"

Catherine revived from her dazed condition sufficiently to protest against being led out of the door, and the four went gayly up the hill together; but Catherine's mind was intent on the suggestion which Algernon had made. "Professional? Work? A vocation? Anything so simple and delightful, and natural as telling stories? Could I do something that would make lots of people happier and better, as Aunt Clara's pictures do, and Mother's work and Father's?" The bliss of the idea was quite too much for her, and she broke away from the others, exclaiming:

"I'll race you all to the porch steps. One, two, three, scramble!"



CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

DOCTOR'S ORDERS

Dr. Helen, dismissing her last patient at the office door, glanced into the waiting-room. To her surprise, she saw Alice sitting there with a magazine in her hand.

"Why, my dear, what is wrong? Are you ill? Come in here." Alice rose and followed her into the little white room.

"Nothing is wrong. I wanted to see you alone for a few minutes, and I thought this was the best way to do it. Are you quite free now?"

"Entirely. Sit down in this comfortable chair. I was startled. To have you fall ill after a week with us would be distressing."

"It has been such a dear week!" sighed Alice. "And I've rested all the time and have loved being with the girls. No, I'm quite well. But I had a letter from Mrs. Langdon, at Dexter, you know, just before I left home, and she told me I might tell you, if I cared to, what she has never let me tell any one outside the family,—that is, that I am one of the girls she is helping through college. I'm glad she said I might, for I've often wished Catherine knew, and it will be next best if you do."

"It is a rather trying condition of Mrs. Langdon's," said Dr. Helen sympathetically, "and sometimes creates difficult situations for the girls concerned, but I long ago gave up hope that she would ever change her ways. I quite understand how you feel, because, during my last two years at Dexter, I was one of her girls, too."

"You?" Alice's tone expressed the deepest surprise, and Dr. Helen continued.

"My father could not afford to send me, and I earned the money for my first two years, and was struggling along, trying to spend several hours a day earning money and at the same time to keep up with my work, when Mrs. Langdon, who was staying at home that winter, heard about me from friends. She helped me finish my college course, and gave me substantial aid in taking my professional course. I repaid the money afterward, but I couldn't repay the kindness."

"She is wonderfully kind," said Alice, "though her queer ways make you forget it sometimes. I had had letters from her before I left home the first year, of course, about the business part, and I went on, feeling that I wasn't going entirely among strangers, but she paid no attention to me at all. It was only by chance that I met her in the spring through Hannah."

"Poor child! You must have been much disappointed and very lonely at first. But she is a friend worth having, in spite of her peculiarities. I am glad she let you share your secret with me. Did she say anything about her own health when she wrote? I almost never hear from her."

"Not a word. But she asked me to call on her old friend, Madam Kittredge, while I was here."

"She is our pastor's mother, a beautiful woman, and nearly blind. You must certainly call. Catherine always makes the rounds of the old ladies among our patients once a summer, and she loves to go to Madam Kittredge's. She must take you. I wonder—What is that? Come!"

A rustling of skirts and the sound of whispers was heard in the waiting-room. In answer to the doctor's invitation, the door was slowly opened, and Hannah put her head in at the crack, Frieda's appearing just below it, and Catherine's just above.

"Well, here you are!" cried Hannah. "We've been searching the house from attic to cellar for Alice, and finally had an inspiration and came here."

"Anything so exclusive as this," remarked Catherine, as she entered, "makes the rest of us jealous."

"Fearfully chealous," said Frieda earnestly, putting her arm around Alice's neck, and perching on the arm of her chair.

Hannah and Catherine sat down on the window-seat, pushing the curtains out of the way as they did so.

"Mother really wanted to have her office curtains made of antiseptic gauze," said Catherine. "Why don't you two say anything?"

"You interrupted me just as I was having an inspiration," said her mother.

"O, what a pity," sighed Hannah. "Because Catherine is bored."

"Bored? Catherine? Did she tell you so?"

"Yes, I did," said Catherine stoutly. "I knew they were, too; and I thought if I owned up that I was, they would say they were, but they won't."

"Incorruptible politeness!" said Dr. Helen. "How do you account for your own sudden ennui?"

"It's not just to-day," said Catherine. "I really think my life is rather dull, anyhow. Of course, having the girls here is quite an event, but I wish there were big, exciting things I had to do or see to. Mending, and helping Inga make salads and beds, and even going to college is tiresome. Just what every one else does. And the worst of it is that every one expects me to be enthusiastic all the time!"

They all laughed at Catherine's disconsolate tone, but Dr. Helen looked professional. "This heat is enough to make any one cross," she said. "I suppose the rest of you feel the same way, but, being guests, don't dare say so?"

"Do prescribe for us, Dr. Helen," begged Hannah. "I don't feel especially bored just now, but I often do. Going to Europe was the only event in my life!"

"And going to college in mine!" said Alice.

"Coming here is all that has ever happened to me," said Frieda solemnly.

"You poor things! It is a serious state of affairs. I suppose you pine for kidnappers, or lovers or financial difficulties or fearful illnesses or Arctic explorations."

"Exactly!" cried Catherine. "Especially the last, on a day like this. But, really, Mother, of course, I don't feel as I said more than once in a great while, and I was talking to amuse myself; but can't you suggest something for us to do this afternoon? The more we lie around and keep cool, the warmer we grow. The Boat Club seems to have tired of picnics, and I want to do something while Alice is here,—something really interesting and pleasant to remember, something we didn't plan ourselves."

"Yes, do tell us something," the others pleaded.

Dr. Helen drew a prescription pad to her.

"Don't talk," she said, "while I am thinking. I'll undertake the case, if you will all agree to follow orders exactly, and in case of a relapse, to remember and act upon the spirit of to-day's prescription."

"Agreed!" they chorused, and then sat in silence and watched her hand as it moved over the little sheets. These she folded like powder-papers, endorsed on the outside, and handed over to her patients.

"To be taken at half-past three o'clock, in good spirits and your prettiest afternoon frock," read Hannah. "I didn't suppose that you would prescribe spirits, Dr. Helen! What does yours say, Catherine?"

"They are all alike on the outside," said Dr. Helen. "Now run away and play. I have telephoning to do, and mustn't be bothered."

They bent over her for kisses and danced away, looking anything but bored.

At half-past three, dressed according to orders, they gathered on the porch, and at a signal opened their little papers.

There was a minute of silence, and then their eyes met, annoyed and yet amused a little.

Hannah spoke first.

"Evidently the rest of you aren't any more fascinated than I am! I didn't count on going off all by myself to see a stranger! But we asked for a prescription, and we all promised to follow it, so here goes. Doctors always give disagreeable medicine!"

"Mine isn't unpleasant, except that I have to do it alone," said Alice. "Which way does Madam Kittredge live, Catherine?"

"Two doors beyond Dot's, where we were yesterday. You can't miss it. I wish I could go with you, but let's hurry up and get back. Do you know the way to yours, Frieda?"

"It tells the way plainly enough," said Frieda, grumbling a little. "But I think I wish I were a scientific Christian, like the ones you told me about!"

The others laughed sympathetically.

"Too late to save yourself now," said Hannah. "Go ahead and get it over, and then we'll get even with Dr. Helen some way for playing us such a mischievous trick. Good-by. I have to go down town for mine."

Dr. Helen from her window watched them separate, and smiled. A few minutes later Bert appeared, looking for some one to amuse him.

The doctor told him of the malady that had seized her maidens, and of their quest for healing.

"It's an epidemic," said Bert solemnly. "I've got it bad, and I saw Arch an hour ago, and he was so low he couldn't even smile. Said he was going to cut out paper dolls or string buttons, if this kept up. Can't you prescribe for us, Doctor?"

"Why, yes. Get Archie and bring him up here to supper this evening. Tell him he needn't smile. Perhaps my ladies-errant may have stories to tell that will ease your pain a little!"

Bert joyfully undertook to bring Archie, and set off at once while Dr. Helen gave Inga instructions for an especially festive supper, and with her own hands prepared a frozen dessert.

The four girls, who had barely slept apart in the week since Alice's arrival, were now walking along widely separate paths, each one feeling oddly alone, and yet not wholly disliking the sensation. Catherine, well-used to her mother's ways and beliefs, smiled to herself as she went off to tell stories and play cat's cradle with the washerwoman's little girl, who had a "spine" and had to be "kep' quiet with high epidemics somethin' fierce."

"It's just like Mother," she thought. "She knew I was peevish and really needed to be alone. Just as she used to send me to my 'boudoir' to pout by myself when I was little. The hours with the girls seem so precious that I can't bear to lose one, but I suppose I did need to be alone. You know, Mr. Squirrel, or Mr. Oakkitten, as Frieda would call you, what George Herbert said:

'By all means use sometimes to be alone. Salute thyself: see what thy soul doth wear.'

"You needn't scamper away up the tree so fast. I'm not going to stay round here long enough to interfere with your looking over your spiritual wardrobe. I wonder if your soul wears soft gray fur?" And the story-teller walked quickly on through the woods, chanting to herself: "Old world, how beautiful thou art!" and planning for an unusually effective denouement for the tale of the Three Little Pigs.

Hannah, traversing the blistering length of Main Street, had arrived at the gloomy brick building labelled Hotel, and had inquired for Mrs. Tracy of whom her prescription told her this much: "Travelling man's wife, convalescent after long severe illness."

Mrs. Tracy would receive her in her room, and Hannah followed the proprietor, who was also bell-boy and head waiter, up the shabby stairs, feeling decidedly foolish, but determined not to give up.

Once inside the room, she forgot her own feelings. It was a most doleful place, with ugly walls, cheap stained furniture and huge figured curtains; but she was met by a sweet-faced young woman in a soft blue negligee.

"Dr. Helen telephoned me that you were coming," she said, taking Hannah's hand and looking into her eyes with a bright look that made Hannah feel interested at once.

"Will you take the place of honor?" She indicated a stiff little settee, upholstered in magenta cotton velvet.

"It must be what the Courier advertisement meant, when it spoke of furniture, 'warranted upholstered,'" said Hannah seating herself, and smiling her most merry smile at her attractive little hostess.

The thin face almost dimpled with pleasure.

"So you read the Courier, too! Mr. Tracy bought back numbers of it to amuse me, and I've collected the most delightful clippings. You see, I'm alone so much. The nurse wasn't very entertaining, and my husband has to be away all the week, and I have to have some one to laugh with, or at least, something to laugh at!"

"What fun!" said Hannah. "Do show me your clippings."

"I was just pasting in a birth notice when you came," said Mrs. Tracy, lifting a small scrap-book from a table. "It's about as good as anything. 'Mr. and Mrs. Ezra Kling are the proud parents of a fine baby girl. Present indications are that the lovely lump intends to stay.'"

"O!" Hannah shrieked and leaned forward to look. Mrs. Tracy handed her the book.

"That's why I cut them out and paste them. No one would believe them, otherwise. Here is a gem of music criticism: 'As he stepped to the edge of the platform, the word Artist came to every lip. His natural pathos mingled with his baritone in such a manner that it was impossible to tell where one left off and the other began. And in his dramatic numbers, the writhings of his face showed the convulsive agonies of a soul in pain.'"

"One of my friends told me about a singer coming to a little village, and they described her appearance and her dress, and wound up the paragraph by saying: 'The soloist wore white shoes. No other stage decorations were necessary.'"

"Delightful—unless it was deliberate wit! As it was in a Kansas paper, which spoke of some one's 'blowing large chunks of melody out of a flute.' But the charm of these Winsted gems is the entire unconsciousness of the writer. For instance, here: 'The elite lingerie of Winsted invited their gentleman friends to a leap-year ball!'"

"O, see here!" cried Hannah, turning the pages joyfully. "'The hall was decorated with syringe blossoms!'"

"Only a misprint, and I saw in a Chicago paper the other day that one of the fashionable ladies wore a gown with a gold-colored y-o-l-k. This is partly a misprint, too, 'easy hairs were scattered about with a lavish hand.' But I think it would take a hand that was powerful as well as lavish, to scatter easy chairs very generally! That was the same party where the hostess and her daughters 'dispensed with the refreshments in the dining-room!' But I am not going to keep you laughing over the Courier all the afternoon," and Mrs. Tracy tried to take the book away from Hannah.

"Just one more," she begged. "Listen! 'Mrs. Gray's speech was replete with wit, wisdom and winsome ways.' O dear, Mrs. Tracy! I never saw anything so funny as this book in all my life!"

"The trouble with it is that it gets one started on a certain line, and it is very hard to get away from it."

"Like telling funny names you have heard," suggested Hannah. "Alice and Catherine and Frieda and I got to telling those last night, and we laughed so long and so hard that Dr. Helen came up and put us to bed!"

"Did you have any funnier than Pearl Button?"

"Not really?" protested Hannah. "Alice swore she knew one girl called Dusk Delight Dinwiddie, because she was born at twilight and they thought she was delightful. That was what we were laughing over when Dr. Helen came in, and she stopped long enough to tell us of a college acquaintance of hers named Revelation Rasmussen, who married Will Kelly, and an Ella G. Gray whom they nick-named 'Country Churchyard'!"

"What jolly times you girls must be having," said Mrs. Tracy. "You see, I know all about you. Dr. Helen—I began calling her Dr. Smith, but I couldn't keep it up—has told me all sorts of interesting stories, and those about you four are the most entertaining. I listen to all your doings as though you were characters in a serial story. You don't mind, I hope?"

"Mind? Of course not. We aren't story-book girls at all, though, but very flesh-and-bloody! Why didn't Dr. Helen tell us about you before, and let us come to see you?"

"It has only been a little while that I have felt like seeing people, and when she suggested sending her daughter, I told her not to, for I didn't want your fun interrupted. And I remember when I was your age, I dreaded calling on sick people. I always felt as though I ought to carry them tracts or—"

"Wine jelly," finished Hannah. "Yes, that's the way I felt a little, to-day. I was afraid I'd not be able to think of anything to say, and I planned to offer to read to you."

"That was very good of you, but I've read and been read to so much that I'm glad of other occupations. The nurse exhausted the library's resources. Then I took up picture puzzles. Mr. Tracy brings them out to me every week, but we both get cross about them because they interest us so that we spend half his precious day over them! Just now I am trying to teach myself to knit, out of a book, and I'm in a dreadful tangle. I think the chamber-maid knows how, and I mean to ask her."

"O, let me bring Frieda in to show you. She knows how to do all such things, and would dearly love to. And you ought to meet all your story characters and see if we are like what you imagined. I must go now, for Dr. Helen expressly said that I wasn't to stay long, and I know you are tired."

"I'll soon be rested, and it has been such fun to have you. Wait! Let me give you one of my roses!"

Hannah took the rose, and then put out her hand for good-by. There was something so sweet and winning about the white little face, where tired lines were showing in spite of the smile, that Hannah impulsively bent over and kissed it; and then, promising to come next day with Frieda, she flew down the corridor and out into the street, entirely recovered from her ennui of the morning.

Frieda, meanwhile, was following minute directions which led her at last to a tiny cottage by the riverside. She went up the walk and rapped on the door. No one answered. A second attempt was as unsuccessful, and Frieda turned away, half ready to give up this strange errand which she did not quite fancy. Dr. Helen had asked her to go to this house and buy flowers! It did not look like a florist's. There was a garden behind the house, though. She decided to go back there before giving up. Dr. Helen usually was wise.

Behind the house was a neat, neat garden, with vegetables and berry bushes and gorgeous flowers of every kind. There were little trees whitewashed up to the branches, and whitewashed stones marked the corners of the paths. Frieda stood looking about with pleasure, when she saw coming down the path a little old lady with a black knitted shawl over her head, and a little old man in carpet slippers, with a big pipe in his mouth. They met her shyly and she put her errand in her embarrassed English. The old lady shook her head and looked hopefully at the old man. He shook his and grunted. Frieda tried once more. She frequently had difficulty in making herself understood. This time she used gestures, and made such an earnest effort to be clear that the old people began to look worried. The old lady shook her head again and then, turning to her husband, asked him something in German. Then there was excitement! Frieda plunged into German with them, and the others, delighted to find she knew their language, talked fast and faster.

When she told them she was newly come from their beloved country, their eyes filled with tears and they asked question after question. Leading her to an arbor under the whitewashed trees, they made her sit down. The little old lady hurried into the house and brought out Kuchen and beer. Frieda was blissful. They spoke good German, and had visited Berlin. They were full of respect when they learned that Frieda's father was a Herr Professor, for they themselves had been simple tradespeople. In answer to her questions, they told her how their children had come to America, had prospered, and had sent for the old parents. With sad voices they explained their entire inability to adjust themselves to the new country and the new ways. The language they had not even attempted to acquire. At last, their sons had built this little cottage for them, and, with a grandchild, who spoke both languages, to act as interpreter, they lived peacefully and quietly on.