Rosamond took up, as it were, a little sceptre of her own, from that moment.

Leslie Goldthwaite had been away for three days, staying with her friend, Mrs. Frank Scherman, in Boston. She had found Olivia's note, of Monday evening, when she returned; also, she heard of Rosamond's verbal invitation. Leslie was very bright about these things. She saw in a moment how it had been. Her mother told her what Rosamond had said of who were coming,—the Hobarts and Helen; the rest were not then asked.

Olivia did not like it very well,—that reply of Leslie's. She showed it to Jeannie Hadden; that was how we came to know of it.

"Please forgive me," the note ran, "if I accept Rosamond's invitation for the very reason that might seem to oblige me to decline it. I see you have two days' advantage of her, and she will no doubt lose some of the girls by that. I really heard hers first. I wish very much it were possible to have both pleasures."

That was being terribly true and independent with West Z——. "But Leslie Goldthwaite," Barbara said, "always was as brave as a little bumble-bee!"

How it had come over Rosamond, though, we could not quite understand. It was not pique, or rivalry; there was no excitement about it; it seemed to be a pure, spirited dignity of her own, which she all at once, quietly and of course, asserted.

Mother said something about it to her Saturday morning, when she was beating up Italian cream, and Rosamond was cutting chicken for the salad. The cakes and the jellies had been made the day before.

"You have done this, Rosamond, in a very right and neighborly way, but it isn't exactly your old way. How came you not to mind?"

Rosamond did not discuss the matter; she only smiled and said, "I think, mother, I'm growing very proud and self-sufficient, since we've had real, through-and-through ways of our own."

It was the difference between "somewhere" and "betwixt and between."

Miss Elizabeth Pennington came in while we were putting candles in the bronze branches, and Ruth was laying an artistic fire in the wide chimney. Ruth could make a picture with her crossed and balanced sticks, sloping the firm-built pile backward to the two great, solid logs behind,—a picture which it only needed the touch of flame to finish and perfect. Then the dazzling fire-wreaths curled and clasped through and about it all, filling the spaces with a rushing splendor, and reaching up their vivid spires above its compact body to an outline of complete live beauty. Ruth's fires satisfied you to look at: and they never tumbled down.

She rose up with a little brown, crooked stick in one hand, to speak to Miss Pennington.

"Don't mind me," said the lady. "Go on, please, 'biggin' your castle.' That will be a pretty sight to see, when it lights up."

Ruth liked crooked sticks; they held fast by each other, and they made pretty curves and openings. So she went on, laying them deftly.

"I should like to be here to-night," said Miss Elizabeth, still looking at the fire-pile. "Would you let an old maid in?"

"Miss Pennington! Would you come?"

"I took it in my head to want to. That was why I came over. Are you going to play snap-dragon? I wondered if you had thought of that."

"We don't know about it," said Ruth. "Anything, that is, except the name."

"That is just what I thought possible. Nobody knows those old games nowadays. May I come and bring a great dragon-bowl with me, and superintend that part? Mother got her fate out of a snap-dragon, and we have the identical bowl. We always used to bring it out at Christmas, when we were all at home."

"O Miss Pennington! How perfectly lovely! How good you are!"

"Well, I'm glad you take it so. I was afraid it was terribly meddlesome. But the fancy—or the memory—seized me."

How wonderfully our Halloween party was turning out!

And the turning-out is almost the best part of anything; the time when things are getting together, in the beautiful prosperous way they will take, now and then, even in this vexed world.

There was our lovely little supper-table all ready. People who have servants enough, high-trained, to do these things while they are entertaining in the drawing-room, don't have half the pleasure, after all, that we do, in setting out hours beforehand, and putting the last touches and taking the final satisfaction before we go to dress.

The cake, with the ring in it, was in the middle; for we had put together all the fateful and pretty customs we could think of, from whatever holiday; there were mother's Italian creams, and amber and garnet wine jellies; there were sponge and lady-cake, and the little macaroons and cocoas that Barbara had the secret of; and the salad, of spring chickens and our own splendid celery, was ready in the cold room, with its bowl of delicious dressing to be poured over it at the last; and the scalloped oysters were in the pantry; Ruth was to put them into the oven again when the time came, and mother would pin the white napkins around the dishes, and set them on; and nobody was to worry or get tired with having the whole to think of; and yet the whole would be done, to the very lighting of the candles, which Stephen had spoken for, by this beautiful, organized co-operation of ours. Truly it is a charming thing,—all to itself, in a family!

To be sure, we had coffee and bread and butter and cold ham for dinner that day; and we took our tea "standed round," as Barbara said; and the dishes were put away in the covered sink; we knew where we could shirk righteously and in good order, when we could not accomplish everything; but there was neither huddle nor hurry; we were as quiet and comfortable as we could be. Even Rosamond was satisfied with the very manner; to be composed is always to be elegant. Anybody might have come in and lunched with us; anybody might have shared that easy, chatty cup of tea.

The front parlor did not amount to much, after all, pleasant and pretty as it was for the first receiving; we were all too eager for the real business of the evening. It was bright and warm with the wood-fire and the lights; and the white curtains, nearly filling up three of its walls, made it very festal-looking. There was the open piano, and Ruth played a little; there was the stereoscope, and some of the girls looked over the new views of Catskill and the Hudson that Dakie Thayne had given us; there was the table with cards, and we played one game of Old Maid, in which the Old Maid got lost mysteriously into the drawer, and everybody was married; and then Miss Pennington appeared at the door, with her man-servant behind her, and there was an end. She took the big bowl, pinned over with a great damask napkin, out of the man's hands, and went off privately with Barbara into the dining-room.

"This is the Snap," she said, unfastening the cover, and producing from within a paper parcel. "And that," holding up a little white bottle, "is the Dragon." And Barbara set all away in the dresser until after supper. Then we got together, without further ceremony, in the brown room.

We hung wedding-rings—we had mother's, and Miss Elizabeth had brought over Madam Pennington's—by hairs, and held them inside tumblers; and they vibrated with our quickening pulses, and swung and swung, until they rung out fairy chimes of destiny against the sides. We floated needles in a great basin of water, and gave them names, and watched them turn and swim and draw together,—some point to point, some heads and points, some joined cosily side to side, while some drifted to the margin and clung there all alone, and some got tears in their eyes, or an interfering jostle, and went down. We melted lead and poured it into water; and it took strange shapes; of spears and masts and stars; and some all went to money; and one was a queer little bottle and pills, and one was pencils and artists' tubes, and—really—a little palette with a hole in it.



And then came the chestnut-roasting, before the bright red coals. Each girl put down a pair; and I dare say most of them put down some little secret, girlish thought with it. The ripest nuts burned steadiest and surest, of course; but how could we tell these until we tried? Some little crack, or unseen worm-hole, would keep one still, while its companion would pop off, away from it; some would take flight together, and land in like manner, without ever parting company; these were to go some long way off; some never moved from where they began, but burned up, stupidly and peaceably, side by side. Some snapped into the fire. Some went off into corners. Some glowed beautiful, and some burned black, and some got covered up with ashes.

Barbara's pair were ominously still for a time, when all at once the larger gave a sort of unwilling lurch, without popping, and rolled off a little way, right in toward the blaze.

"Gone to a warmer climate," whispered Leslie, like a tease. And then crack! the warmer climate, or something else, sent him back again, with a real bound, just as Barbara's gave a gentle little snap, and they both dropped quietly down against the fender together.

"What made that jump back, I wonder?" said Pen Pennington.

"O, it wasn't more than half cracked when it went away," said Stephen, looking on.

Who would be bold enough to try the looking-glass? To go out alone with it into the dark field, walking backward, saying the rhyme to the stars which if there had been a moon ought by right to have been said to her:—

"Round and round, O stars so fair! Ye travel, and search out everywhere. I pray you, sweet stars, now show to me, This night, who my future husband shall be!"

Somehow, we put it upon Leslie. She was the oldest; we made that the reason.

"I wouldn't do it for anything!" said Sarah Hobart. "I heard of a girl who tried it once, and saw a shroud!"

But Leslie was full of fun that evening, and ready to do anything. She took the little mirror that Ruth brought her from up stairs, put on a shawl, and we all went to the front door with her, to see her off.

"Round the piazza, and down the bank," said Barbara, "and backward all the way."

So Leslie backed out at the door, and we shut it upon her. The instant after, we heard a great laugh. Off the piazza, she had stepped backward, directly against two gentlemen coming in.

Doctor Ingleside was one, coming to get his supper; the other was a friend of his, just arrived in Z——. "Doctor John Hautayne," he said, introducing him by his full name.

We knew why. He was proud of it. Doctor John Hautayne was the army surgeon who had been with him in the Wilderness, and had ridden a stray horse across a battle-field, in his shirt-sleeves, right in front of a Rebel battery, to get to some wounded on the other side. And the Rebel gunners, holding their halyards, stood still and shouted.

It put an end to the tricks, except the snap-dragon.

We had not thought how late it was; but mother and Ruth had remembered the oysters.

Doctor John Hautayne took Leslie out to supper. We saw him look at her with a funny, twinkling curiosity, as he stood there with her in the full light; and we all thought we had never seen Leslie look prettier in all her life.

After supper, Miss Pennington lighted up her Dragon, and threw in her snaps. A very little brandy, and a bowl full of blaze.

Maria Hendee "snapped" first, and got a preserved date.

"Ancient and honorable," said Miss Pennington, laughing.

Then Pen Pennington tried, and got nothing.

"You thought of your own fingers," said her aunt.

"A fig for my fortune!" cried Barbara, holding up her trophy.

"It came from the Mediterranean," said Mrs. Ingleside, over her shoulder into her ear; and the ear burned.

Ruth got a sugared almond.

"Only a kernel," said the merry doctor's wife, again.

The doctor himself tried, and seized a slip of candied flag.

"Warm-hearted and useful, that is all," said Mrs. Ingleside.

"And tolerably pungent," said the doctor.

Doctor Hautayne drew forth—angelica.

Most of them were too timid or irresolute to grasp anything.

"That's the analogy," said Miss Pennington. "One must take the risk of getting scorched. It is 'the woman who dares,' after all."

It was great fun, though.

Mother cut the cake. That was the last sport of the evening.

If I should tell you who got the ring, you would think it really meant something. And the year is not out yet, you see.

But there was no doubt of one thing,—that our Halloween at Westover was a famous little party.

* * * * *

"How do you all feel about it?" asked Barbara, sitting down on the hearth in the brown room, before the embers, and throwing the nuts she had picked up about the carpet into the coals.

We had carried the supper-dishes away into the out-room, and set them on a great spare table that we kept there. "The room is as good as the girl," said Barbara. It is a comfort to put by things, with a clear conscience, to a more rested time. We should let them be over the Sunday; Monday morning would be all china and soapsuds; then there would be a nice, freshly arrayed dresser, from top to bottom, and we should have had both a party and a piece of fall cleaning.

"How do you feel about it?"

"I feel as if we had had a real own party, ourselves," said Ruth; "not as if 'the girls' had come and had a party here. There wasn't anybody to show us how!"

"Except Miss Pennington. And wasn't it bewitchinating of her to come? Nobody can say now—"

"What do you say it for, then?" interrupted Rosamond. "It was very nice of Miss Pennington, and kind, considering it was a young party. Otherwise, why shouldn't she?"



CHAPTER IX.

WINTER NIGHTS AND WINTER DAYS.

"That was a nice party," said Miss Pennington, walking home with Leslie and Doctor John Hautayne, behind the Inglesides. "What made it so nice?"

"You, very much," said Leslie, straightforwardly.

"I didn't begin it," said Miss Elizabeth. "No; that wasn't it. It was a step out, somehow Out of the treadmill. I got tired of parties long ago, before I was old. They were all alike. The only difference was that in one house the staircase went up on the right side of the hall, and in another on the left,—now and then, perhaps, at the back; and when you came down again, the lady near the drawing-room door might be Mrs. Hendee one night and Mrs. Marchbanks another; but after that it was all the same. And O, how I did get to hate ice-cream!"

"This was a party of 'nexts,'" said Leslie, "instead of a selfsame."

"What a good time Miss Waters had—quietly! You could see it in her face. A pretty face!" Miss Elizabeth spoke in a lower tone, for Lucilla was just before the Inglesides, with Helen and Pen Pennington. "She works too hard, though. I wish she came out more."

"The 'nexts' have to get tired of books and mending-baskets, while the firsts are getting tired of ice-creams," replied Leslie. "Dear Miss Pennington, there are ever so many nexts, and people don't think anything about it!"

"So there are," said Miss Elizabeth, quietly. "People are very stupid. They don't know what will freshen themselves up. They think the trouble is with the confectionery, and so they try macaroon and pistachio instead of lemon and vanilla. Fresh people are better than fresh flavors. But I think we had everything fresh to-night. What a beautiful old home-y house it is!"

"And what a home-y family!" said Doctor John Hautayne.

"We have an old home-y house," said Miss Pennington, suddenly, "with landscape-papered walls and cosey, deep windows and big chimneys. And we don't half use it. Doctor Hautayne, I mean to have a party! Will you stay and come to it?"

"Any time within my two months' leave," replied Doctor Hautayne, "and with very great pleasure."

"So she will have it before very long," said Leslie, telling us about the talk the next day.

It! Well, when Miss Pennington took up a thing she did take it up! That does not come in here, though,—any more of it.

The Penningtons are very proud people. They have not a very great deal of money, like the Haddens, and they are not foremost in everything like the Marchbankses; somehow they do not seem to care to take the trouble for that; but they are so established; it is a family like an old tree, that is past its green branching time, and makes little spread or summer show, but whose roots reach out away underneath, and grasp more ground than all the rest put together.

They live in an old house that is just like them. It has not a new-fashioned thing about it. The walls are square, plain brick, painted gray; and there is a low, broad porch in front, and then terraces, flagged with gray stone and bordered with flower-beds at each side and below. They have peacocks and guinea-hens, and more roses and lilies and larkspurs and foxgloves and narcissus than flowers of any newer sort; and there are great bushes of box and southernwood, that smell sweet as you go by.

Old General Pennington had been in the army all his life. He was a captain at Lundy's Lane, and got a wound there which gave him a stiff elbow ever after; and his oldest son was killed in Mexico, just after he had been brevetted Major. There is a Major Pennington now,—the younger brother,—out at Fort Vancouver; and he is Pen's father. When her mother died, away out there, he had to send her home. The Penningtons are just as proud as the stars and stripes themselves; and their glory is off the selfsame piece.

They made very much of Dakie Thayne when he was here, in their quiet, retired way; and they had always been polite and cordial to the Inglesides.

One morning, a little while after our party, mother was making an apple-pudding for dinner, when Madam Pennington and Miss Elizabeth drove round to the door.

Ruth was out at her lessons; Barbara was busy helping Mrs. Holabird. Rosamond went to the door, and let them into the brown room.

"Mother will be sorry to keep you waiting, but she will come directly. She is just in the middle of an apple-pudding."

Rosamond said it with as much simple grace of pride as if she had had to say, "Mother is busy at her modelling, and cannot leave her clay till she has damped and covered it." Her nice perception went to the very farther-most; it discerned the real best to be made of things, the best that was ready made, and put that forth.

"And I know," said Madam Pennington, "that an apple-pudding must not be left in the middle. I wonder if she would let an old woman who has lived in barracks come to her where she is?"

Rosamond's tact was superlative. She did not say, "I will go and see"; she got right up and said, "I am sure she will; please come this way," and opened the door, with a sublime confidence, full and without warning, upon the scene of operations.

"O, how nice!" said Miss Elizabeth; and Madam Pennington walked forward into the sunshine, holding her hand out to Mrs. Holabird, and smiling all the way from her smooth old forehead down to the "seventh beauty" of her dimple-cleft and placid chin.

"Why, this is really coming to see people!" she said.

Mrs. Holabird's white hand did not even want dusting; she just laid down the bright little chopper with which she was reducing her flour and butter to a golden powder, and took Madam Pennington's nicely gloved fingers into her own, without a breath of apology. Apology! It was very meek of her not to look at all set up.

Barbara rose from her chair with a red ringlet of apple-paring hanging down against her white apron, and seated herself again at her work when the visitors had taken the two opposite corners of the deep, cushioned sofa.

The red cloth was folded back across the end of the dining-table, and at the other end were mother's white board and rolling-pin, the pudding-cloth wrung into a twist out of the scald, and waiting upon a plate, and a pitcher of cold water with ice tinkling against its sides. Mother sat with the deal bowl in her lap, turning and mincing with the few last strokes the light, delicate dust of the pastry. The sunshine—work and sunshine always go so blessedly together—poured in, and filled the room up with life and glory.

"Why, this is the pleasantest room in all your house!" said Miss Elizabeth.

"That is just what Ruth said it would be when we turned it into a kitchen," said Barbara.

"You don't mean that this is really your kitchen!"

"I don't think we are quite sure what it is," replied Barbara, laughing. "We either dine in our kitchen or kitch in our dining-room; and I don't believe we have found out yet which it is!"

"You are wonderful people!"

"You ought to have belonged to the army, and lived in quarters," said Mrs. Pennington. "Only you would have made your rooms so bewitching you would have been always getting turned out."

"Turned out?"

"Yes; by the ranking family. That is the way they do. The major turns out the captain, and the colonel the major. There's no rest for the sole of your foot till you're a general."

Mrs. Holabird set her bowl on the table, and poured in the ice-water. Then the golden dust, turned and cut lightly by the chopper, gathered into a tender, mellow mass, and she lifted it out upon the board. She shook out the scalded cloth, spread it upon the emptied bowl, sprinkled it snowy-thick with flour, rolled out the crust with a free quick movement, and laid it on, into the curve of the basin. Barbara brought the apples, cut up in white fresh slices, and slid them into the round. Mrs. Holabird folded over the edges, gathered up the linen cloth in her hands, tied it tightly with a string, and Barbara disappeared with it behind the damask screen, where a puff of steam went up in a minute that told the pudding was in. Then Mrs. Holabird went into the pantry-closet and washed her hands, that never really came to need more than a finger-bowl could do for them, and Barbara carried after her the board and its etceteras, and the red cloth was drawn on again, and there was nothing, but a low, comfortable bubble in the chimney-corner to tell of house-wifery or dinner.

"I wish it had lasted longer," said Miss Elizabeth. "I am afraid I shall feel like company again now."

"I am ashamed to tell you what I came for," said Madam Pennington. "It was to ask about a girl. Can I do anything with Winny Lafferty?"

"I wish you could," said Mrs. Holabird, benevolently.

"She needs doing with" said Barbara.

"Your having her would be different from our doing so," said Mrs. Holabird. "I often think that one of the tangles in the girl-question is the mistake of taking the rawest specimens into families that keep but one. With your Lucy, it might be the very making of Winny to go to you."

"The 'next' for her, as Ruth would say," said Barbara.

"Yes. The least little thing that comes next is better than a world full of wisdom away off beyond. There is too much in 'general housework' for one ignorant, inexperienced brain to take in. What should we think of a government that gave out its 'general field-work' so?"

"There won't be any Lucys long," said Madam Pennington, with a sigh. "What are homes coming to?"

"Back to homes, I hope, from houses divided against themselves into parlors and kitchens," said mother, earnestly. "If I should tell you all I think about it, you would say it was visionary, I am afraid. But I believe we have got to go back to first principles; and then the Lucys will grow again."

"Modern establishments are not homes truly," said Madam Pennington.

"We shall call them by their names, as the French do, if we go on," said mother,—"hotels."

"And how are we to stop, or help it? The enemy has got possession. Irishocracy is a despotism in the land."

"Only," said mother, in her sweetest, most heartfelt way, "by learning how true it is that one must be chief to really serve; that it takes the highest to do perfect ministering; that the brightest grace and the most beautiful culture must come to bear upon this little, every-day living, which is all that the world works for after all. The whole heaven is made that just the daily bread for human souls may come down out of it. Only the Lord God can pour this room full of little waves of sunshine, and make a still, sweet morning in the earth."

Mother and Madam Pennington looked at each other with soulful eyes.

"'We girls,'" began mother again, smiling,—"for that is the way the children count me in,—said to each other, when we first tried this new plan, that we would make an art-kitchen. We meant we would have things nice and pretty for our common work; but there is something behind that,—the something that 'makes the meanest task divine,'—the spiritual correspondence of it. When we are educated up to that I think life and society will be somewhat different. I think we shall not always stop short at the drawing-room, and pretend at each other on the surface of things. I think the time may come when young girls and single women will be as willing, and think it as honorable, to go into homes which they need, and which need them, and give the best that they have grown to into the commonwealth of them, as they are willing now to educate and try for public places. And it will seem to them as great and beautiful a thing to do. They won't be buried, either. When they take the work up, and glorify it, it will glorify them. We don't know yet what households might be, if now we have got the wheels so perfected, we would put the living spirit into the wheels. They are the motive power; homes are the primary meetings. They would be little kingdoms, of great might! I wish women would be content with their mainspring work, and not want to go out and point the time upon the dial!"

Mother never would have made so long a speech, but that beautiful old Mrs. Pennington was answering her back all the time out of her eyes. There was such a magnetism between them for the moment, that she scarcely knew she was saying it all. The color came up in their cheeks, and they were young and splendid, both of them. We thought it was as good a Woman's Convention as if there had been two thousand of them instead of two. And when some of the things out of the closets get up on the house-tops, maybe it will prove so.

Madam Pennington leaned over and kissed mother when she took her hand at going away. And then Miss Elizabeth spoke out suddenly,—

"I have not done my errand yet, Mrs. Holabird. Mother has taken up all the time. I want to have some nexts. Your girls know what I mean; and I want them to take hold and help. They are going to be 'next Thursdays,' and to begin this very coming Thursday of all. I shall give primary invitations only,—and my primaries are to find secondaries. No household is to represent merely itself; one or two, or more, from one family are to bring always one or two, or more, from somewhere else. I am going to try if one little bit of social life cannot be exogenous; and if it can, what the branching-out will come to. I think we want sapwood as well as heartwood to keep us green. If anybody doesn't quite understand, refer to 'How Plants Grow—Gray.'"

She went off, leaving us that to think of.

Two days after she looked in again, and said more. "Besides that, every primary or season invitation imposes a condition. Each member is to provide one practical answer to 'What next?' 'Next Thursday' is always to be in charge of somebody. You may do what you like, or can, with it. I'll manage the first myself. After that I wash my hands."

Out of it grew fourteen incomparable Thursday evenings. Pretty much all we can do about them is to tell that they were; we should want fourteen new numbers to write their full history. It was like Mr. Hale's lovely "Ten Times One is Ten." They all came from that one blessed little Halloween party of ours. It means something that there is such a thing as the multiplication-table; doesn't it? You can't help yourself if you start a unit, good or bad. The Garden of Eden, and the Ark, and the Loaves and Fishes, and the Hundred and Forty-four Thousand sealed in their foreheads, tell of it, all through the Bible, from first to last. "Multiply!" was the very next, inevitable commandment, after the "Let there be!"

It was such a thing as had never rolled up, or branched out, though, in Westover before. The Marchbankses did not know what to make of it. People got in who had never belonged. There they were, though, in the stately old Pennington house, that was never thrown open for nothing; and when they were once there you really could not tell the difference; unless, indeed, it were that the old, middle wood was the deadest, just as it is in the trees; and that the life was in the new sap and the green rind.

Lucilla Waters invented charades; and Helen Josselyn acted them, as charades had never been acted on West Hill until now. When it came to the Hobarts' "Next Thursday" they gave us "Dissolving Views,"—every successive queer fashion that had come up resplendent and gone down grotesque in these last thirty years. Mrs. Hobart had no end of old relics,—bandbaskets packed full of venerable bonnets, that in their close gradation of change seemed like one individual Indur passing through a metempsychosis of millinery; nests of old hats that were odder than the bonnets; swallow-tailed coats; broad-skirted blue ones with brass buttons; baby waists and basquines; leg-of-mutton sleeves, balloons, and military; collars inch-wide and collars ell-wide with ruffles rayonnantes; gathers and gores, tunnel-skirts, and barrel-skirts and paniers. She made monstrous paper dickeys, and high black stocks, and great bundling neckcloths; the very pocket-handkerchiefs were as ridiculous as anything, from the waiter-napkin size of good stout cambric to a quarter-dollar bit of a middle with a cataract of "chandelier" lace about it. She could tell everybody how to do their hair, from "flat curls" and "scallops" down or up to frizzes and chignons; and after we had all filed in slowly, one by one, and filled up the room, I don't think there ever could have been a funnier evening!

We had musical nights, and readings. We had a "Mutual Friend" Thursday; that was Mrs. Ingleside's. Rosamond was the Boofer Lady; Barbara was Lavvy the Irrepressible; and Miss Pennington herself was Mrs. Wilfer; Mr. and Mrs. Hobart were the Boffins; and Doctor Ingleside, with a wooden leg strapped on, dropped into poetry in the light of a friend; Maria Hendee came in twisting up her back hair, as Pleasant Riderhood,—Maria Hendee's back hair was splendid; Leslie looked very sweet and quiet as Lizzie Hexam, and she brought with her for her secondary that night the very, real little doll's dressmaker herself,—Maddy Freeman, who has carved brackets, and painted lovely book-racks and easels and vases and portfolios for almost everybody's parlors, and yet never gets into them herself.



Leslie would not have asked her to be Jennie Wren, because she really has a lame foot; but when they told her about it, she said right off, "O, how I wish I could be that!" She has not only the lame foot, but the wonderful "golden bower" of sunshiny hair too; and she knows the doll's dressmaker by heart; she says she expects to find her some time, if ever she goes to England—or to heaven. Truly she was up to the "tricks and the manners" of the occasion; nobody entered into it with more self-abandonment than she; she was so completely Jennie Wren that no one—at the moment—thought of her in any other character, or remembered their rules of behaving according to the square of the distance. She "took patterns" of Mrs. Lewis Marchbanks's trimmings to her very face; she readied up behind Mrs. Linceford, and measured the festoon of her panier. There was no reason why she should be afraid or abashed; Maddy Freeman is a little lady, only she is poor, and a genius. She stepped right out of Dickens's story, not into it, as the rest of us did; neither did she even seem to step consciously into the grand Pennington house; all she did as to that was to go "up here," or "over there," and "be dead," as fresh, new-world delights attracted her. Lizzie Hexam went too; they belonged together; and T'other Governor would insist on following after them, and being comfortably dead also, though Society was behind him, and the Veneerings and the Podsnaps looking on. Mrs. Ingleside did not provide any Podsnaps or Veneerings; she said they would be there.

Now Eugene Wrayburn was Doctor John Hautayne; for this was only our fourth evening. Nobody had anything to say about parts, except the person whose "next" it was; people had simply to take what they were helped to.

We began to be a little suspicious of Doctor Hautayne; to wonder about his "what next." Leslie behaved as if she had always known him; I believe it seemed to her as if she always had; some lives meet in a way like that.

It did not end with parties, Miss Pennington's exogenous experiment. She did not mean it should. A great deal that was glad and comfortable came of it to many persons. Miss Elizabeth asked Maddy Freeman to "come up and be dead" whenever she felt like it; she goes there every week now, to copy pictures, and get rare little bits for her designs out of the Penningtons' great portfolios of engravings and drawings of ancient ornamentations; and half the time they keep her to luncheon or to tea. Lucilla Waters knows them now as well as we do; and she is taking German lessons with Pen Pennington.

It really seems as if the "nexts" would grow on so that at last it would only be our old "set" that would be in any danger of getting left out. "Society is like a coral island after all," says Leslie Goldthwaite. "It isn't a rock of the Old Silurian."

It was a memorable winter to us in many ways,—that last winter of the nineteenth century's seventh decade.

One day—everything has to be one day, and all in a minute, when it does come, however many days lead up to it—Doctor Ingleside came in and told us the news. He had been up to see Grandfather Holabird; grandfather was not quite well.

They told him at home, the doctor said, not to stop anywhere; he knew what they meant by that, but he didn't care; it was as much his news as anybody's, and why should he be kept down to pills and plasters?

Leslie was going to marry Doctor John Hautayne.

Well! It was splendid news, and we had somehow expected it. And yet—"only think!" That was all we could say; that is a true thing people do say to each other, in the face of a great, beautiful fact. Take it in; shut your door upon it; and—think! It is something that belongs to heart and soul.

We counted up; it was only seven weeks.

"As if that were the whole of it!" said Doctor Ingleside. "As if the Lord didn't know! As if they hadn't been living on, to just this meeting-place! She knows his life, and the sort of it, though she has never been in it with him before; that is, we'll concede that, for the sake of argument, though I'm not so sure about it; and he has come right here into hers. They are fair, open, pleasant ways, both of them; and here, from the joining, they can both look back and take in, each the other's; and beyond they just run into one, you see, as foreordained, and there's no other way for them to go."

Nobody knew it but ourselves that next night,—Thursday. Doctor Hautayne read beautiful things from the Brownings at Miss Pennington's that evening; it was his turn to provide; but for us,—we looked into new depths in Leslie's serene, clear, woman eyes, and we felt the intenser something in his face and voice, and the wonder was that everybody could not see how quite another thing than any merely written poetry was really "next" that night for Leslie and for John Hautayne.

That was in December; it was the first of March when Grandfather Holabird died.

At about Christmas-time mother had taken a bad cold. We could not let her get up in the mornings to help before breakfast; the winter work was growing hard; there were two or three fires to manage besides the furnace, which father attended to; and although our "chore-man" came and split up kindlings and filled the wood-boxes, yet we were all pretty well tired out, sometimes, just with keeping warm. We began to begin to say things to each other which nobody actually finished. "If mother doesn't get better," and "If this cold weather keeps on," and "Are we going to co-operate ourselves to death, do you think?" from Barbara, at last.

Nobody said, "We shall have to get a girl again." Nobody wanted to do that; and everybody had a secret feeling of Aunt Roderick, and her prophecy that we "shouldn't hold out long." But we were crippled and reduced; Ruth had as much as ever she could do, with the short days and her music.

"I begin to believe it was easy enough for Grant to say 'all summer,'" said Barbara; "but this is Valley Forge." The kitchen fire wouldn't burn, and the thermometer was down to 3 deg. above. Mother was worrying up stairs, we knew, because we would not let her come down until it was warm and her coffee was ready.

That very afternoon Stephen came in from school with a word for the hour.

"The Stilkings are going to move right off to New Jersey," said he. "Jim Stilking told me so. The doctor says his father can't stay here."

"Arctura Fish won't go," said Rosamond, instantly.

"Arctura Fish is as neat as a pin, and as smart as a steel trap," said Barbara, regardless of elegance; "and—since nobody else will ever dare to give in—I believe Arctura Fish is the very next thing, now, for us!"

"It isn't giving in; it is going on," said Mrs. Holabird.

It certainly was not going back.

"We have got through ploughing-time, and now comes seed-time, and then harvest," said Barbara. "We shall raise, upon a bit of renovated earth, the first millennial specimen,—see if we don't!—of what was supposed to be an extinct flora,—the Domestica antediluviana."

Arctura Fish came to us.

If you once get a new dress, or a new dictionary, or a new convenience of any kind, did you never notice that you immediately have occasions which prove that you couldn't have lived another minute without it? We could not have spared Arctura a single day, after that, all winter. Mother gave up, and was ill for a fortnight. Stephen twisted his foot skating, and was laid up with a sprained ankle.

And then, in February, grandfather was taken with that last fatal attack, and some of us had to be with Aunt Roderick nearly all the time during the three weeks that he lived.

When they came to look through the papers there was no will found, of any kind; neither was that deed of gift.

Aunt Trixie was the only one out of the family who knew anything about it. She had been the "family bosom," Barbara said, ever since she cuddled us up in our baby blankets, and told us "this little pig, and that little pig," while she warmed our toes.

"Don't tell me!" said Aunt Trixie. Aunt Trixie never liked the Roderick Holabirds.

We tried not to think about it, but it was not comfortable. It was, indeed, a very serious anxiety and trouble that began, in consequence, to force itself upon us.

After the bright, gay nights had come weary, vexing days. And the worst was a vague shadow of family distrust and annoyance. Nobody thought any real harm, nobody disbelieved or suspected; but there it was. We could not think how such a declared determination and act of Grandfather Holabird should have come to nothing. Uncle and Aunt Roderick "could not see what we could expect about it; there was nothing to show; and there were John and John's children; it was not for any one or two to settle."

Only Ruth said "we were all good people, and meant right; it must all come right, somehow."

But father made up his mind that we could not afford to keep the place. He should pay his debts, now, the first thing. What was left must do for us; the house must go into the estate.

It was fixed, though, that we should stay there for the summer,—until affairs were settled.

"It's a dumb shame!" said Aunt Trixie.



CHAPTER X.

RUTH'S RESPONSIBILITY.

The June days did not make it any better. And the June nights,—well, we had to sit in the "front box at the sunset," and think how there would be June after June here for somebody, and we should only have had just two of them out of our whole lives.

Why did not grandfather give us that paper, when he began to? And what could have become of it since? And what if it were found some time, after the dear old place was sold and gone? For it was the "dear old place" already to us, though we had only lived there a year, and though Aunt Roderick did say, in her cold fashion, just as if we could choose about it, that "it was not as if it were really an old homestead; it wouldn't be so much of a change for us, if we made up our minds not to take it in, as if we had always lived there."

Why, we had always lived there! That was just the way we had always been trying to spell "home," though we had never got the right letters to do it with before. When exactly the right thing comes to you, it is a thing that has always been. You don't get the very sticks and stones to begin with, maybe; but what they stand for grows up in you, and when you come to it you know it is yours. The best things—the most glorious and wonderful of all—will be what we shall see to have been "laid up for us from the foundation." Aunt Roderick did not see one bit of how that was with us.

"There isn't a word in the tenth commandment about not coveting your own house," Barbara would say, boldly. And we did covet, and we did grieve. And although we did not mean to have "hard thoughts," we felt that Aunt Roderick was hard; and that Uncle Roderick and Uncle John were hatefully matter-of-fact and of-course about the "business." And that paper might be somewhere, yet. We did not believe that Grandfather Holabird had "changed his mind and burned it up." He had not had much mind to change, within those last six months. When he was well, and had a mind, we knew what he had meant to do.

If Uncle Roderick and Uncle John had not believed a word of what father told them, they could not have behaved very differently. We half thought, sometimes, that they did not believe it. And very likely they half thought that we were making it appear that they had done something that was not right. And it is the half thoughts that are the hard thoughts. "It is very disagreeable," Aunt Roderick used to say.

Miss Trixie Spring came over and spent days with us, as of old; and when the house looked sweet and pleasant with the shaded summer light, and was full of the gracious summer freshness, she would look round and shake her head, and say, "It's just as beautiful as it can be. And it's a dumb shame. Don't tell me!"

Uncle Roderick was going to "take in" the old homestead with his share, and that was as much as he cared about; Uncle John was used to nothing but stocks and railway shares, and did not want "encumbrances"; and as to keeping it as estate property and paying rent to the heirs, ourselves included,—nobody wanted that; they would rather have things settled up. There would always be questions of estimates and repairs; it was not best to have things so in a family. Separate accounts as well as short ones, made best friends. We knew they all thought father was unlucky to have to do with in such matters. He would still be the "limited" man of the family. It would take two thirds of his inheritance to pay off those old '57 debts.

So we took our lovely Westover summer days as things we could not have any more of. And when you begin to feel that about anything, it would be a relief to have had the last of it. Nothing lasts always; but we like to have the forever-and-ever feeling, however delusive. A child hates his Sunday clothes, because he knows he cannot put them on again on Monday.

With all our troubles, there was one pleasure in the house,—Arctura. We had made an art-kitchen; now we were making a little poem of a serving-maiden. We did not turn things over to her, and so leave chaos to come again; we only let her help; we let her come in and learn with us the nice and pleasant ways that we had learned. We did not move the kitchen down stairs again; we were determined not to have a kitchen any more.

Arctura was strong and blithe; she could fetch and carry, make fires, wash dishes, clean knives and brasses, do all that came hardest to us; and could do, in other things, with and for us, what she saw us do. We all worked together till the work was done; then Arctura sat down in the afternoons, just as we did, and read books, or made her clothes. She always looked nice and pretty. She had large dark calico aprons for her work; and little white bib-aprons for table-tending and dress-up; and mother made for her, on the machine, little linen collars and cuffs.

We had a pride in her looks; and she knew it; she learned to work as delicately as we did. When breakfast or dinner was ready, she was as fit to turn round and serve as we were to sit down; she was astonished herself, at ways and results that she fell in with and attained.

"Why, where does the dirt go to?" she would exclaim. "It never gethers anywheres."

"GATHERS,—anywhere" Rosamond corrected.

Arctura learned little grammar lessons, and other such things, by the way. She was only "next" below us in our family life; there was no great gulf fixed. We felt that we had at least got hold of the right end of one thread in the social tangle. This, at any rate, had come out of our year at Westover.

"Things seem so easy," the girl would say. "It is just like two times one."

So it was; because we did not jumble in all the Analysis and Compound Proportion of housekeeping right on top of the multiplication-table. She would get on by degrees; by and by she would be in evolution and geometrical progression without knowing how she got there. If you want a house, you must build it up, stone by stone, and stroke by stroke; if you want a servant, you, or somebody for you, must build one, just the same; they do not spring up and grow, neither can be "knocked together." And I tell you, busy, eager women of this day, wanting great work out of doors, this is just what "we girls," some of us,—and some of the best of us, perhaps,—have got to stay at home awhile and do.

"It is one of the little jobs that has been waiting for a good while to be done," says Barbara; "and Miss Pennington has found out another. 'There may be,' she says, 'need of women for reorganizing town meetings; I won't undertake to say there isn't; but I'm sure there's need of them for reorganizing parlor meetings. They are getting to be left altogether to the little school-girl "sets." Women who have grown older, and can see through all that nonsense, and have the position and power to break it up, ought to take hold. Don't you think so? Don't you think it is the duty of women of my age and class to see to this thing before it grows any worse?' And I told her,—right up, respectful,—Yes'm; it wum! Think of her asking me, though!"

Just as things were getting to be so different and so nice on West Hill, it seemed so hard to leave it! Everything reminded us of that.

A beautiful plan came up for Ruth, though, at this time. What with the family worries,—which Ruth always had a way of gathering to herself, and hugging up, prickers in, as if so she could keep the nettles from other people's fingers,—and her hard work at her music, she was getting thin. We were all insisting that she must take a vacation this summer, both from teaching and learning; when, all at once, Miss Pennington made up her mind to go to West Point and Lake George, and to take Penelope with her; and she came over and asked Ruth to go too.

"If you don't mind a room alone, dear; I'm an awful coward to have come of a martial family, and I must have Pen with me nights. I'm nervous about cars, too; I want two of you to keep up a chatter; I should be miserable company for one, always distracted after the whistles."

Ruth's eyes shone; but she colored up, and her thanks had half a doubt in them. She would tell Auntie: and they would think how it could be.

"What a nice way for you to go!" said Barbara, after Miss Pennington left. "And how nice it will be for you to see Dakie!" At which Ruth colored up again, and only said that "it would certainly be the nicest possible way to go, if she were to go at all."

Barbara meant—or meant to be understood that she meant—that Miss Pennington knew everybody, and belonged among the general officers; Ruth had an instinct that it would only be possible for her to go by an invitation like this from people out of her own family.

"But doesn't it seem queer she should choose me, out of us all?" she asked. "Doesn't it seem selfish for me to be the one to go?"

"Seem selfish? Whom to?" said Barbara, bluntly. "We weren't asked."

"I wish—everybody—knew that," said Ruth.

Making this little transparent speech, Ruth blushed once more. But she went, after all. She said we pushed her out of the nest. She went out into the wide, wonderful world, for the very first time in her life.

This is one of her letters:—

DEAR MOTHER AND GIRLS:—It is perfectly lovely here. I wish you could sit where I do this morning, looking up the still river in the bright light, with the tender purple haze on the far-off hills, and long, low, shady Constitution Island lying so beautiful upon the water on one side, and dark shaggy Cro' Nest looming up on the other. The Parrott guns at the foundry, over on the headland opposite, are trying,—as they are trying almost all the time,—against the face of the high, old, desolate cliff; and the hurtling buzz of the shells keeps a sort of slow, tremendous time-beat on the air.

I think I am almost more interested in Constitution Island than in any other part of the place. I never knew until I came here that it was the home of the Misses Warner; the place where Queechy came from, and Dollars and Cents, and the Wide, Wide World. It seems so strange to think that they sit there and write still, lovely stories while all this parade and bustle and learning how to fight are going on close beside and about them.

The Cadets are very funny. They will do almost any thing for mischief,—the frolic of it, I mean. Dakie Thayne tells us very amusing stories. They are just going into camp now; and they have parades and battery-practice every day. They have target-firing at old Cro' Nest,—which has to stand all the firing from the north battery, just around here from the hotel. One day the cadet in charge made a very careful sighting of his piece; made the men train the gun up and down, this way and that, a hair more or a hair less, till they were nearly out of patience; when, lo! just as he had got "a beautiful bead," round came a superintending officer, and took a look too. The bad boy had drawn it full on a poor old black cow! I do not believe he would have really let her be blown up; but Dakie says,—"Well, he rather thinks,—if she would have stood still long enough,—he would have let her be—astonished!"

The walk through the woods, around the cliff, over the river, is beautiful. If only they wouldn't call it by such a silly name!

We went out to Old Fort Putnam yesterday. I did not know how afraid Miss Pennington could be of a little thing before. I don't know, now, how much of it was fun; for, as Dakie Thayne said, it was agonizingly funny. What must have happened to him after we got back and he left us I cannot imagine; he didn't laugh much there, and it must have been a misery of politeness.

We had been down into the old, ruinous enclosure; had peeped in at the dark, choked-up casemates; and had gone round and come up on the edge of the broken embankment, which we were following along to where it sloped down safely again,—when, just at the very middle and highest and most impossible point, down sat Miss Elizabeth among the stones, and declared she could neither go back nor forward. She had been frightened to death all the way, and now her head was quite gone. "No; nothing should persuade her; she never could get up on her feet again in that dreadful place." She laughed in the midst of it; but she was really frightened, and there she sat; Dakie went to her, and tried to help her up, and lead her on; but she would not be helped. "What would come of it?" "She didn't know; she supposed that was the end of her; she couldn't do anything." "But, dear Miss Pennington," says Dakie, "are you going to break short off with life, right here, and make a Lady Simon Stylites of yourself?" "For all she knew; she never could get down." I think we must have been there, waiting and coaxing, nearly half an hour, before she began to hitch along; for walk she wouldn't, and she didn't. She had on a black Ernani dress, and a nice silk underskirt; and as she lifted herself along with her hands, hoist after hoist sidewise, of course the thin stuff dragged on the rocks and began to go to pieces. By the time she came to where she could stand, she was a rebus of the Coliseum,—"a noble wreck in ruinous perfection." She just had to tear off the long tatters, and roll them up in a bunch, and fling them over into a hollow, and throw the two or three breadths that were left over her arm, and walk home in her silk petticoat, itself much the sufferer from dust and fray, though we did all we could for her with pocket-handkerchiefs.

"What has happened to Miss Pennington?" said Mrs. General M——, as we came up on the piazza.

"Nothing," said Dakie, quite composed and proper, "only she got tired and sat down; and it was dusty,—that was all." He bowed and went off, without so much as a glance of secret understanding.

"A joke has as many lives as a cat, here," he told Pen and me, afterwards, "and that was too good not to keep to ourselves."

Dear little mother and girls,—I have told stories and described describes, and all to crowd out and leave to the last corner such a thing that Dakie Thayne wants to do! We got to talking about Westover and last summer, and the pleasant old place, and all; and I couldn't help telling him something about the worry. I know I had no business to; and I am afraid I have made a snarl. He says he would like to buy the place! And he wanted to know if Uncle Stephen wouldn't rent it of him if he did! Just think of it,—that boy! I believe he really means to write to Chicago, to his guardian. Of course it never came into my head when I told him; it wouldn't at any rate, and I never think of his having such a quantity of money. He seems just like—as far as that goes—any other boy. What shall I do? Do you believe he will?

P.S. Saturday morning. I feel better about that Poll Parroting of mine, to-day. I have had another talk with Dakie. I don't believe he will write; now, at any rate. O girls! this is just the most perfect morning!

Tell Stephen I've got a splendid little idea, on purpose for him and me. Something I can hardly keep to myself till I get home. Dakie Thayne put it into my head. He is just the brightest boy, about everything! I begin to feel in a hurry almost, to come back. I don't think Miss Pennington will go to Lake George, after all. She says she hates to leave the Point, so many of her old friends are here. But Pen and I think she is afraid of the steamers.

* * * * *

Ruth got home a week after this; a little fatter, a little browner, and a little merrier and more talkative than she had ever been before.

Stephen was in a great hurry about the splendid little mysterious idea, of course. Boys never can wait, half so well as girls, for anything.

We were all out on the balcony that night before dusk, as usual. Ruth got up suddenly, and went into the house for something. Stephen went straight in after her. What happened upon that, the rest of us did not know till afterward. But it is a nice little part of the story,—just because there is so precious little of it.

Ruth went round, through the brown room and the hall, to the front door. Stephen found her stooping down, with her face close to the piazza cracks.

"Hollo! what's the matter? Lost something?"

Ruth lifted up her head. "Hush!"

"Why, how your face shines! What is up?"

"It's the sunset. I mean—that shines. Don't say anything. Our splendid—little—idea, you know. It's under here."

"Be dar—never-minded, if mine is!"

"You don't know. Columbus didn't know where his idea was—exactly. Do you remember when Sphinx hid her kittens under here last summer? Brought 'em round, over the wood-pile in the shed, and they never knew their way out till she showed 'em?"

"It isn't about kittens!"

"Hasn't Old Ma'amselle got some now?"

"Yes; four."

"Couldn't you bring up one—or two—to-morrow morning early, and make a place and tuck 'em in here, under the step, and put back the sod, and fasten 'em up?"

"What—for?" with wild amazement.

"I can't do what I want to, just for an idea. It will make a noise, and I don't feel sure enough. There had better be a kitten. I'll tell you the rest to-morrow morning." And Ruth was up on her two little feet, and had given Stephen a kiss, and was back into the house, and round again to the balcony, before he could say another word.

Boys like a plan, though; especially a mysterious getting-up-early plan; and if it has cats in it, it is always funny. He made up his mind to be on hand.

Ruth was first, though. She kept her little bolt drawn all night, between her room and that of Barbara and Rose. At five o'clock, she went softly across the passage to Stephen's room, in her little wrapper and knit slippers. "I shall be ready in ten minutes," she whispered, right into his ear, and into his dream.

"Scat!" cried Stephen, starting up bewildered.

And Ruth "scatted."

Down on the front piazza, twenty minutes after, she superintended the tucking in of the kittens, and then told him to bring a mallet and wedge. She had been very particular to have the kittens put under at a precise place, though there was a ready-made hole farther on. The cat babies mewed and sprawled and dragged themselves at feeble length on their miserable little legs, as small blind kittiewinks are given to doing.

"They won't go far," said Ruth. "Now, let's take this board up."

"What—for?" cried Stephen, again.

"To get them out, of course," says Ruth.

"Well, if girls ain't queer! Queerer than cats!"

"Hush!" said Ruth, softly. "I believe—but I don't dare say a word yet—there's something there!"

"Of course there is. Two little yowling—"

"Something we all want found, Steve," Ruth whispered, earnestly. "But I don't know. Do hush! Make haste!"

Stephen put down his face to the crack, and took a peep. Rather a long serious peep. When he took his face back again, "I see something," he said. "It's white paper. Kind of white, that is. Do you suppose, Ruth—? My cracky! if you do!"

"We won't suppose," said Ruth. "We'll hammer."

Stephen knocked up the end of the board with the mallet, and then he got the wedge under and pried. Ruth pulled. Stephen kept hammering and prying, and Ruth held on to all he gained, until they slipped the wedge along gradually, to where the board was nailed again, to the middle joist or stringer. Then a few more vigorous strokes, and a little smart levering, and the nails loosened, and one good wrench lifted it from the inside timber and they slid it out from under the house-boarding.

Underneath lay a long, folded paper, much covered with drifts of dust, and speckled somewhat with damp. But it was a dry, sandy place, and weather had not badly injured it.

"Stephen, I am sure!" said Ruth, holding Stephen back by the arm. "Don't touch it, though! Let it be, right there. Look at that corner, that lies opened up a little. Isn't that grandfather's writing?"



It lay deep down, and not directly under. They could scarcely have reached it with their hands. Stephen ran into the parlor, and brought out an opera-glass that was upon the table there.

"That's bright of you, Steve!" cried Ruth.

Through the glass they discerned clearly the handwriting. They read the words, at the upturned corner,—"heirs after him."

"Lay the board back in its place," said Ruth. "It isn't for us to meddle with any more. Take the kittens away." Ruth had turned quite pale.

Going down to the barn with Stephen, presently, carrying the two kittens in her arms, while he had the mallet and wedge,—

"Stephen," said she, "I'm going to do something on my own responsibility."

"I should think you had."

"O, that was nothing. I had to do that. I had to make sure before I said anything. But now,—I'm going to ask Uncle and Aunt Roderick to come over. They ought to be here, you know."

"Why! don't you suppose they will believe, now?"

"Stephen Holabird! you're a bad boy! No; of course it isn't that." Ruth kept right on from the barn, across the field, into the "old place."

Mrs. Roderick Holabird was out in the east piazza, watering her house plants, that stood in a row against the wall. Her cats always had their milk, and her plants their water, before she had her own breakfast. It was a good thing about Mrs. Roderick Holabird, and it was a good time to take her.

"Aunt Roderick," said Ruth, coming up, "I want you and Uncle to come over right after breakfast; or before, if you like; if you please."

It was rather sudden, but for the repeated "ifs."

"You want!" said Mrs. Roderick in surprise. "Who sent you?"

"Nobody. Nobody knows but Stephen and me. Something is going to happen." Ruth smiled, as one who has a pleasant astonishment in store. She smiled right up out of her heart-faith in Aunt Roderick and everybody.

"On the whole, I guess you'd better come right off,—to breakfast!" How boldly little Ruth took the responsibility! Mr. and Mrs. Roderick had not been over to our house for at least two months. It had seemed to happen so. Father always went there to attend to the "business." The "papers" were all at grandfather's. All but this one, that the "gale" had taken care of.

Uncle Roderick, hearing the voices, came out into the piazza.

"We want you over at our house," repeated Ruth. "Right off, now; there's something you ought to see about."

"I don't like mysteries," said Mrs. Roderick, severely, covering her curiosity; "especially when children get them up. And it's no matter about the breakfast, either way. We can walk across, I suppose, Mr. Holabird, and see what it is all about. Kittens, I dare say."

"Yes," said Ruth, laughing out; "it is kittens, partly. Or was."

So we saw them, from mother's room window, all coming along down the side-hill path together.

We always went out at the front door to look at the morning. Arctura had set the table, and baked the biscuits; we could breathe a little first breath of life, nowadays, that did not come out of the oven.

Father was in the door-way. Stephen stood, as if he had been put there, over the loose board, that we did not know was loose.

Ruth brought Uncle and Aunt Roderick up the long steps, and so around.

"Good morning," said father, surprised. "Why, Ruth, what is it?" And he met them right on that very loose board; and Stephen stood stock still, pertinaciously in the way, so that they dodged and blundered about him.

"Yes, Ruth; what is it?" said Mrs. Roderick Holabird.

Then Ruth, after she had got the family solemnly together, began to be struck with the solemnity. Her voice trembled.

"I didn't mean to make a fuss about it; only I knew you would all care, and I wanted—Stephen and I have found something, mother!" She turned to Mrs. Stephen Holabird, and took her hand, and held it hard.

Stephen stooped down, and drew out the loose board. "Under there," said he; and pointed in.

They could all see the folded paper, with the drifts of dust upon it, just as it had lain for almost a year.

"It has been there ever since the day of the September Gale, father," he said. "The day, you know, that grandfather was here."

"Don't you remember the wind and the papers?" said Ruth. "It was remembering that, that put it into our heads. I never thought of the cracks and—" with a little, low, excited laugh—"the 'total depravity of inanimate things,' till—just a little while ago."

She did not say a word about that bright boy at West Point, now, before them all.

Uncle Roderick reached in with the crook of his cane, and drew forward the packet, and stooped down and lifted it up. He shook off the dust and opened it. He glanced along the lines, and at the signature. Not a single witnessing name. No matter. Uncle Roderick is an honest man. He turned round and held it out to father.

"It is your deed of gift," said he; and then they two shook hands.

"There!" said Ruth, tremulous with gladness. "I knew they would. That was it. That was why. I told you, Stephen!"

"No, you didn't," said Stephen. "You never told me anything—but cats."

"Well! I'm sure I am glad it is all settled," said Mrs. Roderick Holabird, after a pause; "and nobody has any hard thoughts to lay up."

They would not stop to breakfast; they said they would come another time.

But Aunt Roderick, just before she went away, turned round and kissed Ruth. She is a supervising, regulating kind of a woman, and very strict about—well, other people's—expenditures; but she was glad that the "hard thoughts" were lifted off from her.

* * * * *

"I knew," said Ruth, again, "that we were all good people, and that it must come right."

"Don't tell me!" says Miss Trixie, intolerantly. "She couldn't help herself."



CHAPTER XI.

BARBARA'S BUZZ.

Leslie Goldthwaite's world of friendship is not a circle. Or if it is, it is the far-off, immeasurable horizon that holds all of life and possibility.

"You must draw the line somewhere," people say. "You cannot be acquainted with everybody."

But Leslie's lines are only radii. They reach out to wherever there is a sympathy; they hold fast wherever they have once been joined. Consequently, she moves to laws that seem erratic to those for whom a pair of compasses can lay down the limit. Consequently, her wedding was "odd."

If Olivia Marchbanks had been going to be married there would have been a "circle" invited. Nobody would have been left out; nobody would have been let in. She had lived in this necromantic ring; she would be married in it; she would die and be buried in it; and of all the wide, rich, beautiful champaign of life beyond,—of all its noble heights, and hidden, tender hollows,—its gracious harvest fields, and its deep, grand, forest glooms,—she would be content, elegantly and exclusively, to know nothing. To her wedding people might come, indeed, from a distance,—geographically; but they would come out of a precisely corresponding little sphere in some other place, and fit right into this one, for the time being, with the most edifying sameness.

From the east and the west, the north and the south, they began to come, days beforehand,—the people who could not let Leslie Goldthwaite be married without being there. There were no proclamation cards issued, bearing in imposing characters the announcement of "Their Daughter's Marriage," by Mr. and Mrs. Aaron Goldthwaite, after the like of which one almost looks to see, and somewhat feels the need of, the regular final invocation,—"God save the Commonwealth!"

There had been loving letters sent here and there; old Miss Craydocke, up in the mountains, got one, and came down a month earlier in consequence, and by the way of Boston. She stayed there at Mrs. Frank Scherman's; and Frank and his wife and little Sinsie, the baby,—"she isn't Original Sin, as I was," says her mother,—came up to Z—— together, and stopped at the hotel. Martha Josselyn came from New York, and stayed, of course, with the Inglesides.

Martha is a horrible thing, girls; how do you suppose I dare to put her in here as I do? She is a milliner. And this is how it happens. Her father is a comparatively poor man,—a book-keeper with a salary. There are ever so many little Josselyns; and Martha has always felt bound to help. She is not very likely to marry, and she is not one to take it into her calculation, if she were; but she is of the sort who are said to be "cut out for old maids," and she knows it. She could not teach music, nor keep a school, her own schooling—not her education; God never lets that be cut short—was abridged by the need of her at home. But she could do anything in the world with scissors and needle; and she can make just the loveliest bonnets that ever were put together.

So, as she can help more by making two bonnets in a day, and getting six dollars for them beside the materials, she lets her step-mother put out her impossible sewing, and has turned a little second-story room in her father's house into a private millinery establishment. She will only take the three dollars apiece, beyond the actual cost, for her bonnets, although she might make a fortune if she would be rapacious; for she says that pays her fairly for her time, and she has made up her mind to get through the world fairly, if there is any breathing-space left for fairness in it. If not, she can stop breathing, and go where there is.

She gets as much to do as she can take. "Miss Josselyn" is one of the little unadvertised resources of New York, which it is very knowing, and rather elegant, to know about. But it would not be at all elegant to have her at a party. Hence, Mrs. Van Alstyne, who had a little bonnet, of black lace and nasturtiums, at this very time, that Martha Josselyn had made for her, was astonished to find that she was Mrs. Ingleside's sister and had come on to the marriage.

General and Mrs. Ingleside—Leslie's cousin Delight—had come from their away-off, beautiful Wisconsin home, and brought little three-year-old Rob and Rob's nurse with them. Sam Goldthwaite was at home from Philadelphia, where he is just finishing his medical course,—and Harry was just back again from the Mediterranean; so that Mrs. Goldthwaite's house was full too. Jack could not be here; they all grieved over that. Jack is out in Japan. But there came a wonderful "solid silk" dress, and a lovely inlaid cabinet, for Leslie's wedding present,—the first present that arrived from anybody; sent the day he got the news;—and Leslie cried over them, and kissed them, and put the beautiful silk away, to be made up in the fashion next year, when Jack comes home; and set his picture on the cabinet, and put his letters into it, and says she does not know what other things she shall find quite dear enough to keep them company.

Last of all, the very day before the wedding, came old Mr. Marmaduke Wharne. And of all things in the world, he brought her a telescope. "To look out at creation with, and keep her soul wide," he says, and "to put her in mind of that night when he first found her out, among the Hivites and the Hittites and the Amalekites, up in Jefferson, and took her away among the planets, out of the snarl."

Miss Craydocke has been all summer making a fernery for Leslie; and she took two tickets in the cars, and brought it down beside her, on the seat, all the way from Plymouth, and so out here. How they could get it to wherever they are going we all wondered, but Dr. Hautayne said it should go; he would have it most curiously packed, in a box on rollers, and marked,—"Dr. J. Hautayne, U.S. Army. Valuable scientific preparations; by no means to be turned or shaken." But he did say, with a gentle prudence,—"If somebody should give you an observatory, or a greenhouse, I think we might have to stop at that, dear."

Nobody did, however. There was only one more big present, and that did not come. Dakie Thayne knew better. He gave her a magnificent copy of the Sistine Madonna, which his father had bought in Italy, and he wrote her that it was to be boxed and sent after her to her home. He did not say that it was magnificent; Leslie wrote that to us afterward, herself. She said it made it seem as if one side of her little home had been broken through and let in heaven.

We were all sorry that Dakie could not be here. They waited till September for Harry; "but who," wrote Dakie, "could expect a military engagement to wait till all the stragglers could come up? I have given my consent and my blessing; all I ask is that you will stop at West Point on your way." And that was what they were going to do.

Arabel Waite and Delia made all the wedding dresses. But Mrs. Goldthwaite had her own carefully perfected patterns, adjusted to a line in every part. Arabel meekly followed these, and saved her whole, fresh soul to pour out upon the flutings and finishing.

It was a morning wedding, and a pearl of days. The summer had not gone from a single leaf. Only the parch and the blaze were over, and beautiful dews had cooled away their fever. The day-lilies were white among their broad, tender green leaves, and the tube-roses had come in blossom. There were beds of red and white carnations, heavy with perfume. The wide garden porch, into which double doors opened from the summer-room where they were married, showed these, among the grass-walks of the shady, secluded place, through its own splendid vista of trumpet-hung bignonia vines.

Everybody wanted to help at this wedding who could help. Arabel Waite asked to be allowed to pour out coffee, or something. So in a black silk gown, and a new white cap, she took charge of the little room up stairs, where were coffee and cakes and sandwiches for the friends who came from a distance by the train, and might be glad of something to eat at twelve o'clock. Delia offered, "if she only might," to assist in the dining-room, where the real wedding collation stood ready. And even our Arctura came and asked if she might be "lent," to "open doors, or anything." The regular maids of the house found labor so divided that it was a festival day all through.

Arctura looked as pretty a little waiting-damsel as might be seen, in her brown, two-skirted, best delaine dress, and her white, ruffled, muslin bib-apron, her nicely arranged hair, braided up high around her head and frizzed a little, gently, at the front,—since why shouldn't she, too, have a bit of the fashion?—and tied round with a soft, simple white ribbon. Delia had on a violet-and-white striped pique, quite new, with a ruffled apron also; and her ribbon was white, too, and she had a bunch of violets and green leaves upon her bosom. We cared as much about their dress as they did about ours. Barbara herself had pinched Arctura's crimps, and tied the little white bow among-them.

Every room in the house was attended.

"There never was such pretty serving," said Mrs. Van Alstyne, afterward. "Where did they get such people?—And beautiful serving," she went on, reverting to her favorite axiom, "is, after all, the very soul of living!"

"Yes, ma'am," said Barbara, gravely. "I think we shall find that true always."

Opposite the door into the garden porch were corresponding ones into the hall, and directly down to these reached the last flight of the staircase, that skirted the walls at the back with its steps and landings. We could see Leslie all the way, as she came down, with her hand in her father's arm.

She descended beside him like a softly accompanying white cloud; her dress was of tulle, without a hitch or a puff or a festoon about it. It had two skirts, I believe, but they were plain-hemmed, and fell like a mist about her figure. Underneath was no rustling silk, or shining satin; only more mist, of finest, sheerest quaker-muslin; you could not tell where the cloud met the opaque of soft, unstarched cambric below it all. And from her head to her feet floated the shimmering veil, fastened to her hair with only two or three tube-rose blooms and the green leaves and white stars of the larger myrtle. There was a cluster of them upon her bosom, and she held some in her left hand.

Dr. Hautayne looked nobly handsome, as he came forward to her side in his military dress; but I think we all had another picture of him in our minds,—dusty, and battle-stained, bareheaded, in his shirt-sleeves, as he rode across the fire to save men's lives. When a man has once looked like that, it does not matter how he ever merely looks again.

Marmaduke Wharne stood close by Ruth, during the service. She saw his gray, shaggy brows knit themselves into a low, earnest frown, as he fixedly watched and listened; but there was a shining underneath, as still water-drops shine under the gray moss of some old, cleft rock; and a pleasure upon the lines of the rough-cast face, that was like the tender glimmering of a sunbeam.

When Marmaduke Wharne first saw John Hautayne, he put his hand upon his shoulder, and held him so, while he looked him hardly in the face.

"Do you think you deserve her, John?" the old man said. And John looked him back, and answered straightly, "No!" It was not mere apt and effective reply; there was an honest heartful on the lips and in the eyes; and Leslie's old friend let his hand slip down along the strong, young arm, until it grasped the answering hand, and said again,—

"Perhaps, then, John,—you'll do!"

"Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?" That is what the church asks, in her service, though nobody asked it here to-day. But we all felt we had a share to give of what we loved so much. Her father and her mother gave; her girl friends gave; Miss Trixie Spring, Arabel Waite, Delia, little Arctura, the home-servants, gathered in the door-way, all gave; Miss Craydocke, crying, and disdaining her pocket-handkerchief till the tears trickled off her chin, because she was smiling also and would not cover that up,—gave; and nobody gave with a more loving wrench out of a deep heart, than bluff old frowning Marmaduke Wharne.



* * * * *

Nobody knows the comfort that we Holabirds took, though, in those autumn days, after all this was over, in our home; feeling every bright, comfortable minute, that our home was our own. "It is so nice to have it to love grandfather by," said Ruth, like a little child.

"Everything is so pleasant," said Barbara, one sumptuous morning. "I've so many nice things that I can choose among to do. I feel like a bee in a barrel of sugar. I don't know where to begin." Barbara had a new dress to make; she had also a piece of worsted work to begin; she had also two new books to read aloud, that Mrs. Scherman had brought up from Boston.

We felt rich in much prospectively; we could afford things better now; we had proposed and arranged a book-club; Miss Pennington and we were to manage it; Mrs. Scherman was to purchase for us. Ruth was to have plenty of music. Life was full and bright to us, this golden autumn-time, as it had never been before. The time itself was radiant; and the winter was stored beforehand with pleasures; Arctura was as glad as anybody; she hears our readings in the afternoons, when she can come up stairs, and sit mending stockings or hemming aprons.

We knew, almost for the first time, what it was to be without any pressure of anxiety. We dared to look round the house and see what was wearing out. We could replace things—some, at any rate—as well as not; so we had the delight of choosing, and the delight of putting by; it was a delicious perplexity. We all felt like Barbara's bee; and when she said that once she said it for every day, all through the new and happy time.

It was wonderful how little there was, after all, that we did want in any hurry. We thought it over. We did not care to carpet the dining-room; we liked the drugget and the dark wood-margins better. It came down pretty nearly, at last, so far as household improvements were concerned, to a new broadcloth cover for the great family table in the brown-room.

Barbara's bee-havior, however, had its own queer fluctuations at this time, it must be confessed. Whatever the reason was, it was not altogether to be depended on. It had its alternations of humming content with a good deal of whimsical bouncing and buzzing and the most unpredictable flights. To use a phrase of Aunt Trixie's applied to her childhood, but coming into new appropriateness now, Barbara "acted like a witch."

She began at the wedding. Only a minute or two before Leslie came down, Harry Goldthwaite moved over to where she stood just a little apart from the rest of us, by the porch door, and placed himself beside her, with some little commonplace word in a low tone, as befitted the hushed expectancy of the moment.

All at once, with an "O, I forgot!" she started away from him in the abruptest fashion, and glanced off across the room, and over into a little side parlor beyond the hall, into which she certainly had not been before that day. She could have "forgotten" nothing there; but she doubtless had just enough presence of mind not to rush up the staircase toward the dressing-rooms, at the risk of colliding with the bridal party. When Leslie an instant later came in at the double doors, Mrs. Holabird caught sight of Barbara again just sliding into the far, lower corner of the room by the forward entrance, where she stood looking out meekly between the shoulders and the floating cap-ribbons of Aunt Trixie Spring and Miss Arabel Waite during the whole ceremony.

Whether it was that she felt there was something dangerous in the air, or that Harry Goldthwaite had some new awfulness in her eyes from being actually a commissioned officer,—Ensign Goldthwaite, now, (Rose had borrowed from the future, for the sake of euphony and effect, when she had so retorted feet and dignities upon her last year,)—we could not guess; but his name or presence seemed all at once a centre of electrical disturbances in which her whisks and whirls were simply to be wondered at.

"I don't see why he should tell me things," was what she said to Rosamond one day, when she took her to task after Harry had gone, for making off almost before he had done speaking, when he had been telling us of the finishing of some business that Mr. Goldthwaite had managed for him in Newburyport. It was the sale of a piece of property that he had there, from his father, of houses and building-lots that had been unprofitable to hold, because of uncertain tenants and high taxes, but which were turned now into a comfortable round sum of money.

"I shall not be so poor now, as if I had only my pay," said Harry. At which Barbara had disappeared.

"Why, you were both there!" said Barbara.

"Well, yes; we were there in a fashion. He was sitting by you, though, and he looked up at you, just then. It did not seem very friendly."

"I'm sure I didn't notice; I don't see why he should tell me things," said whimsical Barbara.

"Well, perhaps he will stop," said Rose, quietly, and walked away.

It seemed, after a while, as if he would. He could not understand Barbara in these days. All her nice, cordial, honest ways were gone. She was always shying at something. Twice he was here, when she did not come into the room until tea-time.

"There are so many people," she said, in her unreasonable manner. "They make me nervous, looking and listening."

We had Miss Craydocke and Mrs. Scherman with us then. We had asked them to come and spend a week with us before they left Z——.

Miss Craydocke had found Barbara one evening, in the twilight, standing alone in one of the brown-room windows. She had come up, in her gentle, old-friendly way, and stood beside her.

"My dear," she said, with the twilight impulse of nearness,—"I am an old woman. Aren't you pushing something away from you, dear?"

"Ow!" said Barbara, as if Miss Craydocke had pinched her. And poor Miss Craydocke could only walk away again.

When it came to Aunt Roderick, though, it was too much. Aunt Roderick came over a good deal now. She had quite taken us into unqualified approval again, since we had got the house. She approved herself also. As if it was she who had died and left us something, and looked back upon it now with satisfaction. At least, as if she had been the September Gale, and had taken care of that paper for us.

Aunt Roderick has very good practical eyes; but no sentiment whatever. "It seems to me, Barbara, that you are throwing away your opportunities," she said, plainly.

Barbara looked up with a face of bold unconsciousness. She was brought to bay, now; Aunt Roderick could exasperate her, but she could not touch the nerve, as dear Miss Craydocke could.

"I always am throwing them away," said Barbara. "It's my fashion. I never could save corners. I always put my pattern right into the middle of my piece, and the other half never comes out, you see. What have I done, now? Or what do you think I might do, just at present?"

"I think you might save yourself from being sorry by and by," said Aunt Roderick.

"I'm ever so much obliged to you," said Barbara, collectedly. "Just as much as if I could understand. But perhaps there'll be some light given. I'll turn it over in my mind. In the mean while, Aunt Roderick, I just begin to see one very queer thing in the world. You've lived longer than I have; I wish you could explain it. There are some things that everybody is very delicate about, and there are some that they take right hold of. People might have pocket-perplexities for years and years, and no created being would dare to hint or ask a question; but the minute it is a case of heart or soul,—or they think it is,—they 'rush right in where angels fear to tread.' What do you suppose makes the difference?"

After that, we all let her alone, behave as she might. We saw that there could be no meddling without marring. She had been too conscious of us all, before anybody spoke. We could only hope there was no real mischief done, already.

"It's all of them, every one!" she repeated, half hysterically, that day, after her shell had exploded, and Aunt Roderick had retreated, really with great forbearance. "Miss Craydocke began, and I had to scream at her; even Sin Scherman made a little moral speech about her own wild ways, and set that baby crowing over me! And once Aunt Trixie 'vummed' at me. And I'm sure I ain't doing a single thing!" She whimpered and laughed, like a little naughty boy, called to account for mischief, and pretending surprised innocence, yet secretly at once enjoying and repenting his own badness; and so we had to let her alone.

But after a while Harry Goldthwaite stayed away four whole days, and then he only came in to say that he was going to Washington to be gone a week. It was October, now, and his orders might come any day. Then we might not see him again for three years, perhaps.

On the Thursday of that next week, Barbara said she would go down and see Mrs. Goldthwaite.

"I think it quite time you should," said Mrs. Holabird. Barbara had not been down there once since the wedding-day.

She put her crochet in her pocket, and we thought of course she would stay to tea. It was four in the afternoon when she went away.

About an hour later Olivia Marchbanks called.

It came out that Olivia had a move to make. In fact, that she wanted to set us all to making moves. She proposed a chess-club, for the winter, to bring us together regularly; to include half a dozen families, and meet by turn at the different houses.

"I dare say Miss Pennington will have her neighborhood parties again," she said; "they are nice, but rather exhausting; we want something quiet, to come in between. Something a little more among ourselves, you know. Maria Hendee is a splendid chess-player, and so is Mark. Maud plays with her father, and Adelaide and I are learning. I know you play, Rosamond, and Barbara,—doesn't she? Nobody can complain of a chess-club, you see; and we can have a table at whist for the elders who like it, and almost always a round game for the odds and ends. After supper, we can dance, or anything. Don't you think it would do?"

"I think it would do nicely for one thing," said Rose, thoughtfully. "But don't let us allow it to be the whole of our winter."

Olivia Marchbanks's face clouded. She had put forward a little pawn of compliment toward us, as towards a good point, perhaps, for tempting a break in the game. And behold! Rosamond's knight only leaped right over it, facing honestly and alertly both ways.

"Chess would be good for nothing less than once a week," said Olivia. "I came to you almost the very first, out of the family," she added, with a little height in her manner. "I hope you won't break it up."

"Break it up! No, indeed! We were all getting just nicely joined together," replied Rosamond, ladylike with perfect temper. "I think last winter was so really good," she went on; "I should be sorry to break up what that did; that is all."

"I'm willing enough to help in those ways," said Olivia, condescendingly; "but I think we might have our own things, too."

"I don't know, Olivia," said Rosamond, slowly, "about these 'own things.' They are just what begin to puzzle me."

It was the bravest thing our elegant Rosamond had ever done. Olivia Marchbanks was angry. She all but took back her invitation.

"Never mind," she said, getting up to take leave. "It must be some time yet; I only mentioned it. Perhaps we had better not try to go beyond ourselves, after all. Such things are sure to be stupid unless everybody is really interested."