Was it Kate Marshall? She scarcely knew.

YOUNG MODERNS BOOKSHELF

THE
VANISHING COMRADE
A Mystery Story for Girls

BY
ETHEL COOK ELIOT

An unusual mystery about a strange orchard house with a brave girl who finally straightens things out

The Sun Dial Press, Inc.
NEW YORK

1937
THE SUN DIAL PRESS, INC.
CL

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
AT
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N.Y.

AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED
TO
MY SISTER HELEN

CHAPTER PAGE I. [Great Aunt Katherine Commands] 1 II. [The Boy in the Flowery, Dragony Picture Frame] 19 III. [The Comrade Does Not Appear] 30 IV. [Little Orchard House, Beware!] 44 V. [Kate Makes Up a Face] 59 VI. [“I Will Pay for It”] 69 VII. [“Even So——”] 86 VIII. [Kate Meets a Detective] 92 IX. [Something of Fairy in It] 106 X. [In the Mirror] 116 XI. [Kate Takes the Helm] 135 XII. [The Special Delivery] 149 XIII. [“You Thief!”] 160 XIV. [The Stranger in the Garden] 174 XV. [Kate on Guard] 194 XVI. [One End of the String] 204 XVII. [Into the Orchard House] 219 XVIII. [The Last Room] 236 XIX. [Elsie Confides] 249 XX. [A Farewell in the Dark] 261 XXI. [Like the Stars] 269

THE
VANISHING COMRADE

“Orchard house, beware! Aunt Katherine’s nieces are here.”

The Vanishing Comrade

CHAPTER I
GREAT AUNT KATHERINE COMMANDS

Two boys and a girl climbed down out of the bus from Middletown when it made its final stop in front of the summer hotel at the head of Broad Street. The boys, between them, were carrying the girl’s books and a goodly number of their own, for they were returning from the last session of the school year. To-morrow summer holidays would begin. They nodded a friendly good-bye to the driver and started off up the steep little elm-roofed street that sloped directly up to Ashland College, an institution for girls, perched on the highest plateau of this hill town. The boys’ father was a professor in that college and the girl’s mother an instructor. But in spite of their privilege of living in the lap of learning these young people had to take a daily nine-mile bus ride down into the bigger village of Middletown if they themselves were to get college preparation.

The boys were twins. They were tall and spare, even for boys of sixteen, and seemed all angles. They had thick thatches of auburn hair, whimsical faces, and generous, clear-cut mouths. The girl was sturdy, slightly square in build, with brown, straight bobbed hair. The bobbed hair was parted at the side and brushed away in a wing from her forehead, and this gave her a boyish, ready look. Her eyes were hazel and very clear and confident in their level glance, but when she smiled, as she did often, they crinkled up into mere slits of eyes, because they were slightly narrow to begin with, and then she seemed oddly Puckish. Her mouth was wide and her lips rather full, but for all of that, because of its uptilted corners, it was really a very nice mouth. She trudged along now between her two friends, the corners of her mouth more uptilted than usual.

“Oh, I’m so glad it’s vacation! At last!” she was saying. “Mother and I are going to have just the nicest summer. We’re going to take long walks we never took, make a new vegetable garden, and eat almost every one of our meals out-of-doors when it isn’t raining. We may even if it does rain! When will your tennis court be done?”

“We’re going to get right at it to-morrow morning,” Sam Hart, the twin on her left, answered. “It ought to be finished by the middle of July or sooner if they’ll let us borrow the roller from the Hotel. Then if your mother is as patient as usual with us, we may be champions ourselves before the summer’s over.”

“She’s crazy to play,” Kate assured them. “But she says we must remember she hasn’t touched a racket in years and that you have to keep in practice to be any good at tennis. It was seventeen years ago she won that cup at the Oakdale Country Club.”

“She must have begun playing when she was in creepers,” Sam exclaimed. “I thought it was a regular cup, a real and regular tournament affair.”

“It was, of course. And she was nineteen, foolish.”

“She’s thirty-six now then.” Lee did the arithmetic. “It’s funny that, being so old as all that, she has always seemed just one of us. Where did you ever get such a mother, Kate?”

“Oh, I took my time about choosing,” Kate answered, apparently seriously. “I didn’t snatch at the first thing offered. I said ‘better not have any mother at all than one who isn’t magnificent.’ So I kept my head and refused to consider anything commonplace. You know the result, gentlemen.”

The boys did not bother to respond even with a laugh. They were used to Kate’s nonsense.

But now in their climb up the steep elm-shaded street they had reached the college campus on the “Heights” and Professor Hart’s house set into its corner.

“I’ll take my books,” Kate said. “Thanks for carrying ’em. If I do a lot of weeding in the court, perhaps it’ll pay you a little for having been such good pack-horses for me all this year.”

But Sam shook his head at the outstretched hands. “I’m coming on with you,” he declared. “How about you, Lee?”

“Me, too,” Lee responded. “Wait a second till I pitch these things on to the piazza.”

But Kate protested. “No, don’t. It’s almost supper time. The bus was late. We’ll be busy, Mother and I. Come after supper, instead, and help us decide where the new garden is to be. Perhaps mother will play Mah Jong with us.”

There was nothing to do but agree when Kate took a dictatorial tone. The boys meekly gave a pile of books into her arms and turned in at their own walk.

Kate’s mouth kept its uptilted corners as she went on alone, humming to herself and thinking pleasant thoughts. She skirted the forsaken campus a little way and then took a short-cut across its lawns. She knew that the last student had left to-day, and there would be no “grass police” to shoo her back to the paths.

“It’s great having all the girls gone,” she mused. “Now I shall have a little of Mother to myself again.”

Kate was justified in her pleasure in the girls’ departure, for those older girls did take an unconscionable amount of Katherine Marshall’s time and thought. Of course, Katherine had to teach them, Kate realized—that was how she earned their living. But she did not understand why, outside of classroom hours, they need be always underfoot. Kate was proud of her mother’s popularity, but often exasperated by it, too; for those older girls never by any chance paid any attention to Kate herself. They were polite, of course, but most perfunctorily; it was her mother they came to see and on her least word and motion they hung almost with bated breath. The truth was that these indifferent, superior girls, always present and never of any use to her, turned the college year for Katherine into a loneliness that even her mother scarcely realized.

There were the Hart boys, of course, always. But boys cannot take the place of a girl comrade. Kate’s mother was all the girl comrade she had. That was why she had not let the boys come with her now. For once, she would be sure to find her mother alone, and the hour would take on, for Kate, something of the nature of a reunion.

The house she now approached, across the street from the campus to which it turned its low and vine-hung back, had formerly been a barn. The college had made it over for Kate’s mother into a charming cottage which despite its turned back was still part of the college property. Kate found her mother sitting on the little garden bench at the side of the big double doors that had once been the carriage entrance and now stood open all spring and summer facing the hazy valley. Her cheek was resting on her hand and the expression in her eyes was a very far-away one, a farther away than the valley one. But she became very present when she heard Kate’s step.

“Oh, Kate, I thought you would never come!” she exclaimed. “Read this letter.” She picked it up from the bench beside her and handed it to Kate. “It’s from your Great Aunt Katherine!”

“What! Again?”

Why Kate exclaimed “Again” would be hard to say, for within her memory Great Aunt Katherine had only written her mother once before, and that was all of two years ago! That letter had been to tell of the sudden death of a semi-relative, a woman of whom, until that time, Kate had never heard. Would this have news of another death? It must be something of importance that had wrung a second letter from Great Aunt Katherine.

Flinging her books on the grass, and following them herself to sit at her mother’s feet, Kate opened the smooth, thick, creamy sheet and read:

My dear Katherine:

I am asking you to send your daughter Katherine to spend the month of July with me here in my Oakdale house. Unexpected business in Boston is keeping me from my usual trip abroad this summer. I do not know whether I told you when acquainting you with Gloria’s tragic death that her daughter was left without home or protection of any sort and that I proposed to take her in. But such was the case. Naturally, ever since, the child has been peculiarly lonely here in Oakdale. And now that she no longer has her day school in Boston to occupy her, the situation is a really trying one. It has occurred to me that Elsie and your Katherine are very nearly of an age, both fifteen, and that they might find themselves companionable. So I am asking you to forget old grievances, as I shall, and send your daughter to me for a month’s visit. I shall plan parties and theatres and good times for them, and promise you that it will be every bit as gay as it was when you were a young girl here, and not too independent then to let your aunt give herself pleasure by planning for yours. I have looked up trains and find that by leaving Middletown at one o’clock, Katherine, with only one change, will arrive in the South Station in Boston at six-fifteen. I shall expect her on that train Saturday of this week, and Bertha, Elsie’s maid, will meet her and bring her out here in time for dinner. If for any reason that is not a convenient train for Katherine to take, will you please wire me what time she will arrive? Sincerely, Aunt Katherine.

Kate looked up at her mother, dazed. “Just like that!” she exclaimed. “Does Great Aunt Katherine expect us to obey her just like that?”

Katherine was grave. “Yes, she has always done things like this. That’s been the trouble. And when things don’t go exactly as she has commanded that they should, she is at first unbelieving and then furious.”

“Hm. And who is Elsie?”

“Elsie is Nick’s little girl, and a sort of foster-niece to Aunt Katherine now, I suppose.”

“It was Nick’s wife who was killed in the automobile accident in France, wasn’t it? But why haven’t you told me about her, about this Elsie? I’ve always wanted a cousin so, Mother!”

“Well, she isn’t exactly a cousin, you know. But even so, if Nick and I hadn’t quarrelled, if we had stayed as we were, in the course of things you would have known each other and perhaps have been very dear friends. It would have been natural.”

“Oh, Mother—quarrels! When you are so lovely, how have people quarrelled with you so? It’s a—paradox. Now don’t say I’ve used the wrong word!—But here’s more, more to the letter!”

Kate had turned the letter over and discovered a postscript on the back. Katherine, who had missed it, bent down, and they read it cheek to cheek.

P.S. I will add, for this will perhaps make your acceptance the quicker to come to, that Nicholas’s name is never mentioned here, either by me or the servants, or even Elsie herself. So that end of things need cause you no anxiety. Elsie is a charming, well-mannered child.

That paragraph had not been intended for Kate’s eyes. Katherine understood that at once, but it was all that she did understand about it. She frowned, puzzled.

“Notice how she says ‘Make your acceptance quicker to come to’,” Kate pointed out sharply. “She takes it for granted you’ll come to it, apparently. If there is any question, it’s only one of time. But why isn’t Nick’s name mentioned?”

Katherine shrugged. “I am afraid she must have quarrelled with him, too, just as she did with your father and me. But if that’s so it must be terrible for both of them, since he owes her so much and she counted on him so to make up for Father and me and later you, Kate, and everything! How could he quarrel with her? Why, he should have put up with anything!”

Katherine’s cheek was again on her hand. Her face was all puzzle. “And why should Elsie be lonely in Oakdale?” she went on aloud, but almost to herself now. “Oakdale is quite a gay little place, and I know very well there are plenty of young people there. Some of them are children of friends of mine, friends I haven’t seen since I was married. Why, there are even the Denton children, just next door to Aunt Katherine’s! It’s all very mysterious, Elsie’s being lonely.”

But mystery where Great Aunt Katherine was concerned was no new thing to Kate. Whenever she thought about Aunt Katherine at all it was always to wonder. Why should her mother be estranged so entirely from her only living relative, this aunt for whom she had been named, and who had been a second mother to her after her own mother had died, when she was a very little girl? Kate could never understand that situation. Katherine was so peculiarly gentle and forgiving and lovable! How could any one stay angry with her?

Last year, when Kate was fourteen, Katherine had tried to explain things to her a little. She had said then that Great Aunt Katherine’s money was the cause of the feud. Only it was not the usual trouble that money makes in families. It was not that Aunt Katherine was selfish or proud. It was—oh, absurdity—that she was over-generous! She expected to force her generosity on her family whether they wanted it or not. It had begun with Kate’s Grandfather Frazier. He and Great Aunt Katherine were half-brother and sister. When Katherine was about Kate’s age now, Grandfather Frazier had failed in business and the very same month Great Aunt Katherine had inherited a fortune from an uncle on her mother’s side. Until that turn of fortune’s wheel Aunt Katherine had been a school teacher living with her half-brother and giving her spare time to mothering her namesake niece. When she woke up one morning to find herself a wealthy—a very wealthy—woman, she immediately decreed that her brother should share the good fortune with her just as she had for so long shared his home with him and his child. But Grandfather Frazier’s pride forbade him to acquiesce in that. The uncle was not his uncle, and it was not only his pride but his sense of propriety that influenced him in his firm decision not to accept one cent from Aunt Katherine. All that he would allow her to do to help his financial situation was to buy the house from him in which they were living so that with the money he might pay his debts. Thereafter he insisted that she was his landlady and he made a fetish until the month of his death of being on time with the absurdly small rent.

Aunt Katherine had built herself a large and mansionlike house on part of the land that went with her brother’s little house. And since he distinctly limited her in the things she might do for his daughter, she adopted, suddenly and to every one’s amazement, a poor young boy, with no background whatever, who had been brought up in a “Home,” and who at the time of her discovering him was working in a factory. She prepared him herself for college, sent him to Harvard, and thrust him, almost head first, into the “younger set” in Oakdale. He had married Gloria, a beautiful young Bostonian but with no especial “connections.” That was all that Kate knew of him, except for this late knowledge that he had a daughter.

Kate could understand her grandfather’s pride, dimly. But her mother’s case was not so clear to her, not quite. Her mother had married a rising young diplomat, a man of supposedly some wealth and assuredly fine ancestry. But on his death, not long after Kate’s birth, it was discovered that there was not a cent to which the young widowed mother could lay claim. Katherine had never explained to Kate how this had happened. She hardly knew herself perhaps, because the processes of Wall Street were a maze to her. Almost gleefully, Aunt Katherine had seized upon this opportunity to offer her niece a home with her and a substantial allowance so that she might feel independent in that home. Katherine had refused point blank. And Aunt Katherine, now very sensitive on the subject of rejected generosities, had made a clean break with her namesake, washed her hands, and dropped her out of her life, much as one might drop a thistle that had pricked too unreasonably.

Katherine, determined to earn her own and her little daughter’s way, had obtained an instructorship here at Ashland College, worked hard and happily ever since, and gloried in her independence.

The whole reason for this choice of poverty and hard work Katherine had not told Kate. But she had hinted that there was a very deep reason and one that justified her. Sometime, perhaps, she would disclose it. Meanwhile, Kate gave all this little thought, and was only brooding over it now because of the letter in her hand.

After a minute she said firmly, “If Great Aunt Katherine thinks I’m going to leave you here alone on this deserted hill-top for a whole month of our precious vacation, she has a surprise in store. Shall we write or wire our regrets, Mother?”

“We’d better write,” Katherine answered, getting up suddenly and beginning in an unusually energetic way to pull up weeds from the lily-of-the-valley bed under the window. “I shall write that Saturday is too soon, for there must be some preparation on our part for such a visit. By next Tuesday, though, I should think you could be ready.”

Kate turned her head to follow her mother with amazed eyes. “You don’t mean I’m to go, Mother?”

“Yes, I want you to go. I want you very much to go. Aunt Katherine apparently needs you. I think, though, she must be drawing on her imagination a bit as to the loneliness of Oakdale for Elsie, especially since she herself says there will be parties and good times for you. You can’t have parties without young people! Even so, her saying she needs you makes our acceptance not only dignified but imperative.”

“But to leave you here alone! How could I ever do that? What are you thinking of?”

Katherine laughed at her daughter then. She was extraordinarily pretty when she laughed, startlingly pretty. But when she sobered, as she was bound to do too quickly, she was quite different, still lovely but not startling. Her face, sober, was intensely earnest. She had a rather square and strong chin but with wide, melting gray eyes to offset it. Her dark curly hair, which when undone came just to her shoulders, could be held in place at her neck with only a shell pin or two, it was so amenable in its curly crispness. Her cheeks and little slim hands were tanned, but with healthy colour showing through, making her, Kate often said, exactly the colour of a golden peach. She was slim and very graceful and not tall.

But in spite of all Katherine’s loveliness and feminine charm, the impression one gained from her was one of over-earnestness, a fire of intense purpose steadily, even fiercely burning under the outwardly gay and light manner.

Now she was laughing. “Why shouldn’t you leave me alone?” she asked. “And I won’t be so alone, either. The Harts are staying. The boys will be my protectors and my playfellows both. I’ve been a fortunate woman all these years to have two such boys as well as my girl! And three mornings a week, you know, I shall be busy helping Mr. Hart with his cataloguing.... Now we shall have to collect all our wits and think about suitable clothes for you.”

Kate’s heart began to beat. When she had read the letter she had not let herself even contemplate what going would mean, not for an instant; for she had not dreamed her mother would so fall in with Aunt Katherine’s plan. But since she had fallen in with it, since she wanted her to go—well, it was very exciting! For the first time she might have for a comrade a girl, a girl of her own age, a chum! For if Elsie, that stranger unheard of until a few minutes ago, was lonely, What was she, Kate Marshall? Oh, she would surely be gladder of Elsie than Elsie could possibly be of her!

She went to the border of the lily-of-the-valley bed and began weeding beside her mother.

“I don’t see what we’ll do about clothes,” she said a little tremulously, not yet really believing in this new vista that seemed opening before her, like the valley there, at her very feet. “If I do go, I suppose Aunt Katherine will expect me to dress for breakfast and dinner and supper and in between times in that splendid house of hers.”

“No, not quite so bad as that; but she certainly will want you to have—let’s see—two ordinary gingham dresses, a little dinner frock, a party frock, a white dress for church, a sport coat and hat, a garden hat, a street hat, a street suit, a——”

But Kate interrupted this list with a quick laugh. “She’ll want in vain, then. Let’s get down to business and just discuss the must-be’s, if I am to be a pig and go and leave you here alone for July with a vacation on your hands.”

Katherine straightened up, brushing the soil from her fingers. Her quick ear had caught a joyous lilt in the voice and laugh that to an ordinary ear would have sounded merely dry. Her own heart leapt in sympathy with Kate’s.

“Fortunately there’s my pink organdie. That must do for dinners,” the mother began, counting on her earth-stained fingers.

“Pardon, Mother darling, my pink organdie. It’s been mine for over a year. Why will you go on calling things yours for years and years and years after they have descended? There’s my pink organdie then. It’ll have to do for church and for parties and for summer best just as it would if I were here. Two gingham dresses almost new. The blue flannel—but that will be too warm and scratchy for July, I’m afraid. Oh, Mother, that’s just all. I simply can’t go to Great Aunt Katherine’s, and I’ll never know Elsie!”

“Of course you can. Haven’t we always found a way to do the things we really wanted? Wait a minute. There’s my new white linen. I shall fix that for you. But your gingham dresses will never do, not for Oakdale. Never!”

“You’re not to give your white linen to me. It’s the prettiest thing you’ve got.”

“Hush! It will make a charming street suit. It will need a black silk tie and a patent-leather belt. I can see you in it.”

“You can, but you won’t!” But when Kate saw her mother’s dazed, puzzled little frown that invariably met her rare impertinences, she relented. “Oh, Mother,” she cried, “if I’m to have your very best things added to mine, of course I shall be perfectly fixed. It will be a regular trousseau.”

“I don’t need anything but these old smocks, staying here,” Katherine insisted. “And that’s exactly what I shall do, give you everything of mine that can possibly be of any use. For once in your life you are going to have just an ordinary young girl good time. And if you and Elsie do hit it off, perhaps Aunt Katherine will consent to her coming back with you for the rest of the vacation. Come, let’s spread all our possibilities out on the beds and see what there is!”

“Yes, after we’ve pared the potatoes for supper,” Kate agreed, trying desperately to hold on to her last shreds of casualness and poise. “We had better have supper to-night, I suppose, whether I go to Great Aunt Katherine’s or not. It must be six o’clock now.”

Katherine threw an arm across Kate’s shoulder as they went through the big door. “How fortunate it is,” she said, not for the first time, “that I have such a steady, common-sensible little girl!”

But Kate would not abide her own hypocrisy.

“Oh, Mother, don’t make me feel cheap!” she exclaimed. “You know perfectly well that I’m just bursting with excitement, only I’m ashamed to show it, for it’s you who are going to be left at home doing just the same old things and seeing just the same old people and everything.”

“But I’m happy doing just that,” Katherine hurried to assure her. “Why, you yourself, Kate, have been looking forward to your vacation here and planning it with such pleasure!”

“Ye—es. But that was before this came. Now I don’t see how I could bear the thought of just staying here! Now that I’m going to have pretty clothes and go to parties and meet some boys and girls, and have a girl chum of my own—why, what I was so looking forward to doesn’t seem anything at all. I’ve suddenly waked up, and there’s a big door open right in front of me, bigger than our funny old front door! I’m going through it, right into such fun! Only I’m leaving you behind. That isn’t fair.”

Katherine was quick to understand. Kate’s whole mood was as real to her as though it were her own. She said, “But don’t you see, dear, I had all that fun a thousand times over when I was a girl. Aunt Katherine gave me parties galore and took me to the theatre as often as Father would let her and there was anything worth seeing. And now that you are to have some of that life for a month, I am delighted. I only wish Aunt Katherine had asked you sooner. I have truly always hoped she would. Only, I suppose, she thought I was like Father and wouldn’t accept things for you any more than for myself. And oh, Katie dear, do try to be patient with Aunt Katherine, no matter what she does or says! Perhaps you will make up a little to her for what I have taken away.”

They stood now in the kitchen, facing each other. Suddenly Kate laughed, her nicest laugh that screwed up her eyes into slits and turned her into a Puck. “Let’s put off supper then,” she cried. “Stodgy old suppers we can have any night. Let’s get out all the clothes we’ve got and just plan. I’m not going to let you touch any of your good ones for me. I’m truly not. But there may be some old things we’ve forgotten.”

“Now you’re really common-sensible, my dear,” Katherine affirmed. “Before it was only pretend common-sensibleness.”

And arm-in-arm, without one look at the kitchen clock which now was pointing to all of quarter past six, they went through the funny, merry little barn house toward the bedrooms.

CHAPTER II
THE BOY IN THE FLOWERY, DRAGONY PICTURE FRAME

During the next few days of hurried preparation for the visit the Hart boys found themselves almost entirely left out of the life in the little barn house, the house that ordinarily served as a second home for them.

“No time for boys to-day,” Kate would call out crisply when they appeared at windows or door. “Woman’s business is afoot. We’re too busy even to look at you.”

And Katherine, who was usually so much more easily beguiled and quick to see their side in any argument, for once echoed Kate and upheld her in her determination to stick to the tasks they had set themselves.

In spite of all Kate’s protests, Katherine’s new white linen was ripped to pieces and remade for the traveller into a jaunty street suit. With a black tie and narrow black patent-leather belt, when it was finished it looked as though it might have come from some fashionable shop in New York. Kate could not help being delighted. The pink organdie, which had done Kate duty for best all last summer, and Katherine for best for several summers before that, was now freshened with new lace and decorated with narrow black velvet ribbon. It was not only becoming, but quite up-to-date, and when it was finished and Kate surveyed herself in it in the glass, standing on a chair to see it all, they both decided that Kate would be able to put clothes definitely out of her mind when she was wearing it, for it was quite appropriate for all the occasions it was destined to grace.

And finally, Katherine’s pretty bedroom was robbed of its month-old chintz curtains which, under her magic, in the space of two days only, became two simple but unique and pretty morning dresses for Kate. Now all that remained to be thought of in the way of clothes was the travelling suit.

“My navy blue silk will do perfectly,” Kate said. “If I’m a little careful, it won’t hurt it any, and next winter it will be as good as ever for your teas and things, Mother, unless I’ve quite grown out of it. Anyway, travelling won’t spoil it.”

When that was agreed upon it naturally followed that Katherine’s new spring hat must go with it; for it was a little navy blue silk hat, light and small and quite fascinating.

“What you’ll ever do for a hat I don’t see,” Kate worried.

“Never mind about me,” Katherine told her nonchalantly. “Here on this hill-top anything does so long as it gives a shade. And if ever I go down to Middletown I can wear your black tam.”

In the silk dress and hat and with her last spring’s blue cape with its orange silk lining Kate felt prepared to meet the eyes of even Elsie’s maid with equanimity. But imagine a girl of fifteen having a lady’s maid!

Katherine thought that was just a glorified title for nurse, probably. But Kate protested that. A nurse for a girl of fifteen would be even more absurd than a maid. Well, Katherine was sure Aunt Katherine herself wouldn’t have a maid. She was a New Englander with all a true New Englander’s scorn of self-indulgence. But she probably did need someone to keep Elsie mended and possibly to be a sort of chaperon for her, too; for Aunt Katherine, since her inheritance, had interested herself in social and charitable work and was a very busy and even an important woman.

The two had endless conversations about Aunt Katherine and the adventures awaiting Kate. And Katherine talked more than she had ever talked before about her own girlhood in Oakdale and the little orchard house where she had always lived and where she had been so happy.

“If it isn’t rented you must go into it,” she told Kate. And then she described the rooms for her and all the important events that had happened in them. Aunt Katherine’s big newer house she hardly spoke of at all, for Kate herself was so soon to see it and know all its corners.

All the planning and sewing and the long intimate conversations about Katherine’s girlhood and bits of family history that Kate had never heard before, kept her right up to the eve of departure occupied and excited. But as bedtime approached that night she began to be shaken by unexpected qualms. She had never before been away from her mother for even one night and they had always shared adventure. That now she was actually to go off by herself into an adventure of her own seemed unnatural and almost impossible.

They were sitting on the bench out beside the big front doors, breathing in all the cool night air they could after the last hot and rather hurried day. Their faces were only palely visible to each other in the starlight. They had been silent for many minutes when Kate said suddenly, and a little huskily, “Mother, may I take the picture of the boy in the silver, flowery, dragony picture frame along to Oakdale with me to-morrow? He’s a sort of talisman of mine.”

Katherine was used to Kate’s abruptnesses and seldom showed surprise at anything anyway. But now she did show surprise, and the voice that answered Kate quivered with more than surprise.

“The silvery, flowery, dragony picture frame? And the boy? What do you know of him, Kate?”

“Why, he’s always been in the little top drawer of your desk. He’s always been there. I’ve never told you how much he meant to me. I’ve made it a secret. But I’ve known him just about as long as I can remember. I was an awfully little girl and had to climb on to a chair at first to see him. But I didn’t climb to look often. I saved it for—magic. When something dreadful happened, when I was punished or lessons were just too hateful, or you were late coming home, then I’d climb up and look at that boy in the frame for comfort. I think it would be very comfortable to have it with me along with your picture, Mother.”

Katherine did not answer this for some time. She stayed as still as a graven image in the starlight. Finally, without moving at all, and in a voice as cool as starlight, she asked, “But why did you make it a secret? I don’t understand a bit. I didn’t know you even knew there was a little upper drawer. It’s almost hidden, and there is a secret about the catch. You have to work it just so.”

“Yes, I know. And I can’t remember how or exactly when I discovered how to work it. At first, I do remember, it was just the frame I loved. It is a little wonder of a frame! The silver was so shining, and then the flowers and the fruit and the dragons are all so enchanting. I traced the dragons with my finger over and over and played they were alive. I thought it was too mysterious and lovely, all of it! It fascinated me in a way I could never tell you.”

Katherine remained silent and Kate went on: “It was only when I was older I began to look at the picture and feel about that so strangely. I discovered what a wonderful face that boy has. I pretended he was the Sandman, the one who gave me my dreams at night. I always had such wonderful dreams, Mother! Remember?”

Katherine did not answer, and Kate felt somehow impelled to go on. She was surprising herself in this account of past childish imaginings. She had never thought about it in words like this before.

“He’d be just the person to have made those dreams for me. His face said he knew them all and thousands and thousands more! Then, when I got older I forgot about his being the Sandman, and anyway, my dreams stopped being wonderful and were just silly. Then I called him the ‘Understander.’ When I especially wanted an understander I’d open the secret drawer—I could do it without climbing on a chair by then—and there he was, looking up at me out of the dragons and the fruit and the flowers with understanding.

“It was all just a notion, of course. Oh, am I talking nonsense, Mother? And was it nonsense to keep it so secret and all, always?”

Katherine answered emphatically, “No. Not nonsense a bit. Only surprisingly—intuitive. For, Kate, he is just the sort of person who could have made up those wonderful dreams you used to have. And he was—and is still, I suppose—just a perfect understander. That is his quality. And it is startling to me, all you have said, for he has been a sort of a talisman to me, too, all these years. I’ve looked at him, at the picture, when I needed understanding. And that is surprising in itself, for once, when he was just the age he is in that picture, the very week the picture was taken, I did him a wrong, a great wrong. We quarrelled. Since then I have never seen or heard from him.”

Kate turned upon her mother with real exasperation at this disclosure. “Oh, Mother! How could you! Another quarrel!”

Katherine said nothing, and Kate instantly softened. She felt that she had wounded her mother; and that was a dreadful thing to have happened on this their last night! It was in an apologizing tone and humbly that she asked then, “And may I take him with me to-morrow?”

“No, I think you’d better not. Let him stay just where he is, in the secret drawer. I may need his magic more than you while you are away.”

So her mother wasn’t really hurt at all, or cross. She had spoken lightly, even airily. Kate sighed her relief. “I’m not asking you who the boy is, notice?” she spoke as lightly as her mother. “It might spoil the magic if I knew a human name for him. And I don’t believe you ever did him a wrong, either. For one thing, I don’t believe any one could do him a wrong. And you never did any one a wrong, anyway. I know it. You’re too dear and kind.— Look at those fireflies out there. Watch me catch one!”

Kate suddenly jumped up and ran away into the summer evening. Katherine stayed still on the bench, watching her quick motions, her leaps and runs and turns. “It’s very like a dance,” she thought. “Only there should be music.” And she began humming softly.

* * * * * * * *

Kate slept that night with the twinges of premature homesickness dulled by fatigue. And when morning came with the last bustle and scurry, any doubts that still lingered back in her mind were lost in the glamour of the adventure whose day had at last arrived.

“I’m going to take ‘The King of the Fairies’ with me to read on the train, Mother,” she called from her bedroom where she was putting the very last things into her bag.

Katherine came to stand in the doorway, a partly spread piece of bread for a sandwich for Kate’s luncheon in her hand. “But you know ‘The King of the Fairies’ by heart,” she said. “Why not take the mystery story Sam and Lee gave you?”

“I’ve packed that. I believe you want ‘The King of the Fairies’ yourself, just as you want the picture!” Kate said, teasingly.

“Perhaps I do. It’s without exception the nicest thing that has happened to us this year, I think. Bring it back safely, for I shall certainly read it again before the summer’s through. Suppose we had been so foolish as to decide we couldn’t afford it that day we stumbled on it in the bookshop and were lost at the first paragraph!”

Kate gasped at such a supposing. “I simply can’t imagine having missed it, never read it, can you? If that had happened, well, everything would be different. It has made so many things different, hasn’t it—reading it?”

“Yes, for us both, I think. That’s why I am sure it is a great book, because it does make such a difference to you, having read it or not. And I understand your wanting it with you to-day. Try to get Aunt Katherine to read it, if you can. She has enough literary appreciation to realize its beauty, and the rest of it, what it does to you—well, it wouldn’t hurt to have it do a little of that to her, too!”

At that minute Sam and Lee whistled from the road, out at the back of the house, and in a second they were around and in at the big front door calling for Kate’s bag and anything that was to be carried. Katherine hurried to finish the sandwiches and tie up the lunch, Kate gave her hair a last boyish, brisk brushing, put on her hat, took her cape on her arm, and they were off, hurrying down to Broad Street and the bus there waiting the minute of starting in front of the Hotel.

“Don’t let your father work Mother too hard on that old catalogue,” Kate besought the boys. “And do write me sometimes about everything, the tennis court and all.”

Sam and Lee promised that they would take turns writing, much as they disliked it, and Kate should not lack for news. “And bring Elsie back with you to repay us,” they commanded. “The Hotel has let us borrow the roller, and the court will be in fine shape. We’ll be all practised up, too. You’d better do some practising yourself while you’re there. Elsie is probably a shark, anyway.”

They reached the bus in good time and stood chattering a few minutes before the bus driver facetiously sang out, “All aboard!” Kate was the only passenger that morning. One quick hug and kiss passed between mother and daughter while Sam put in the suitcase and Lee dropped “The King of the Fairies” and the box of lunch in at the window. The busman himself had climbed into his seat and was sitting with his back to them. The Hotel piazza was deserted for the minute. There was no one besides themselves on the street. Sam kissed Kate on one cheek, and Lee kissed her on the other, quick, sound, affectionate, brotherly kisses. The driver blew his horn twice just to make sure no traveller was belated in the Hotel, started his engine, and the adventurer was off.

Kate stood in the little vestibule, hanging to the door and looking back as long as she could see the three people she was leaving. Katherine was between the boys, hatless, in a blue smocked dress; she was waving and blowing kisses. She looked like a sister to the boys, and not even an older sister from the distance of the speeding bus. Then the vehicle jerked around a corner and Kate sat down, faced about the way they were going, and contemplated her own immediate future.

In school she had often sat watching the big clock over the blackboard in the front of the room; just before the minute hand reached the hour it had a way of suddenly jerking itself ahead with a little click. That was what had happened on the instant of parting from her mother—time, somehow, or at least her place in time, had jerked suddenly and unexpectedly ahead. Now the hour must be striking, she reflected whimsically, and she was at the beginning of a new one. So much the better. She expected it to be a wholly fascinating hour, and Elsie the unknown comrade was waiting in it.

CHAPTER III
THE COMRADE DOES NOT APPEAR

Although Kate kept her book “The King of the Fairies” on her lap in bus and trains, she did not look into its pages at all. Still it had its meaning and its use on the journey. It was something well known and dearly loved going with her into strangeness and uncertainty. Its purple cloth binding spoke to her through the tail of her eye even when she was most busy taking in the fleeting landscape. One would have thought her a seasoned traveller and a very well-poised person if he had seen her sitting so still, her hands lightly touching the closed book, her gaze missing little of interest in country and town as the train rushed along. But in reality her mind was as busy as the spinning wheels, and her thoughts ranged everywhere from the commonplace to the inspired; and as for her emotions, they were in a whir.

But the thought that recurred over and over and from which she never entirely escaped during the whole five hours of travel was this: was any one else in the world so happy and elated as she? People she saw looking from windows, people working in factories, people working in meadows, people walking on streets—how dull and uneventful their present hour was compared to her present hour! And the Hart boys back at home! How could they bear the commonplaceness of going on in the same spot all summer, doing the same things, and seeing the same people! And only one week ago she herself had been more than contented, happily expectant even, when she was facing just such a summer!

Of course, she wondered about Elsie a lot. In fact, she scarcely thought of Great Aunt Katherine at all. Would Elsie meet her at the South Station in Boston? Great Aunt Katherine’s letter had said Elsie’s maid would meet her. But surely Elsie herself would be there, too. Kate, for a minute, imagined herself in Elsie’s place, eagerly waiting among the crowds at the great terminal for the appearance of the new friend, wondering and speculating about her, just as Kate herself was wondering and speculating about Elsie.

The journey seemed very short. Kate could not believe they were actually in Boston until the conductor coming through assured her that in less than two minutes they would be in. But for Kate the next two minutes seemed longer than all the rest of the journey put together. She sat on the edge of the seat, one hand grasping the handle of her suitcase, the other clutching “The King of the Fairies.” And even in her tense excitement the long-drawn-outness of those two minutes made her think about the King of the Fairies and what he had taught, or rather shown, the girl and boy in the book about time—what a mysterious thing it was, quite man-made and not real. She could well believe it now. However, even that two minutes came to an end, as such eternities will.

At the train steps there were “red caps” galore clamouring for baggage to carry, and a pushing crowd of passengers who had poured down from the long line of coaches. Kate shook her head as a matter of course to the porters, and marched along, her rather heavy leather bag, marked with the initials K. M. in white chalk, in one hand, the book and her purse—not a very good balance—in the other. No one could come out into the train shed to meet you, Kate remembered now from the two or three times she had been in that station with her mother. Well, Elsie would be up at the entrance, standing on tiptoes, looking off over heads until their eyes met. How should they know each other? No special arrangement had been made to insure Kate’s being recognized. But Katherine had said, “Don’t worry. Aunt Katherine’s not one to bungle anything. She or Elsie or the maid, probably all three, will spot you at once. And if they don’t, all you have to do is to find a telephone booth and call up the Oakdale house.” And now, coming up through the shed, straining her eyes toward the gate, Kate had not the slightest doubt that the minute her eyes met Elsie’s eyes they would know each other. She had lived in anticipation of this minute now so steadily for so long that she would feel confident of picking Elsie out in a crowd of a thousand girls all of the same age.

But she was getting near the gate and still she had seen no one that might be Elsie. Then, walking on tiptoes for a second, a difficult feat when you are as loaded down as she was, she did see a girl standing a little way back from the gate and watching the passengers with impatient eagerness as they came through. For an instant the eyes of the two girls met. Kate went suddenly, unexpectedly shy at that encounter. But instantly an inner Kate squared her shoulders, in a way the inner Kate had, and forbade the outer Kate to tremble. And when Kate, in a flash, had restored herself to herself, she knew that the girl waiting there was certainly not Elsie; she was too utterly different from anything she had imagined about her. There! She was right. The girl had greeted the woman just ahead of Kate and they hurried off together talking volubly. Kate drew a relieved sigh. She never could have liked that overdressed girl as well as she knew she was going to like Elsie. They would never have become chums and comrades.

But now she herself was outside the gate. She suddenly realized that her suitcase was very heavy and put it down. Simultaneously she looked around confidently for a friendly, welcoming face, for the eyes of the new comrade. There was no such face, no such eyes. But she did become aware of a youngish woman, in a very smart gray tailored suit and Parisian looking black hat with a gray wing, bearing directly down upon her. She was certainly too young to be Great Aunt Katherine; but it was hard to believe that such smartness and apparent distinction could belong to a maid.

“Miss Marshall?”

“Yes, I’m Kate Marshall. And you?”

“Bertha, Miss Elsie’s maid.” She turned toward a middle-aged round little Irishman in brown livery. “Timothy,” she said, “it’s her.” Alas, for the distinction of the black toque!

Timothy stepped briskly forward and picked up Kate’s suitcase, touching his cap, but giving her a quick, keenly interested glance at the same time. “Your trunk checks, if you please, Miss?” he said, holding out his free hand for them.

“Why, there isn’t a trunk. The suitcase is all.”

“Didn’t the trunk catch this train?” Bertha asked, and added in a commiserating tone, “Service is wretched—Miss Frazier says so.”

“I didn’t have any trunk at all. The suitcase holds everything.”

Bertha’s ejaculation of surprise was suddenly turned into a flow of tactful words. “All the better, all the better. That makes things very simple, very simple. We’ve only to go out to the automobile then, and we’ll be in Oakdale in no time.”

Little round Timothy led the way with the bag and book, Kate followed him, and Bertha came behind her. She was not used to walking in processions like this, and she felt distinctly strange and lonely. But the thought that Elsie might be waiting in the car braced her up. Even so she couldn’t imagine why Elsie hadn’t come in and been the first to greet her at the gate. If she were Elsie she would never sit calmly waiting out in the car.

But the car was empty. It was a very handsome, big, luxurious affair, painted a light glossy brown, the very shade of Timothy’s uniform. It had a long, low body, much shining nickel plate, windshields before the back seat as well as the front, and Great Aunt Katherine Frazier’s monogram in silver on the door.

Timothy held back the monogrammed door while Kate stepped in. Then he slid into the driver’s seat, leaving Bertha to follow him. So there was Kate bobbing around on the wide back seat that was richly though slipperily upholstered in smooth leather. Her baggage was in front with the servants. She had not even the cherished book to sustain her. She wondered, a little whimsically, that they had let her carry her purse.

Where was Elsie? Kate gave herself up to speculation as they crawled through the crowded city streets. They crawled, but it was smooth and beautiful crawling, for Timothy was an artist among chauffeurs. Kate looked all around her interestedly and happily in spite of the sharpness of her disappointment at Elsie’s absence. But although it was exciting and stimulating to her to be moving through the streets of the big city she realized the heat uncomfortably and, used to her high hill air, was over-conscious of the unsavoury odours that met her on every side. She unbuttoned and threw back her cape and resisted just in time an impulse to lift her hat from her head by the crown, the way a boy does, and toss it into a corner of the seat so that her head might be a little cooler. But another inclination she did not resist in time. She leaned forward and spoke to Bertha over the windshield: “Elsie, Miss Elsie, couldn’t she come? Is she well?” she asked.

What an idiotic question! Why was she always saying things so abruptly, things she hardly meant to say! Bertha turned her smooth, distinguished-looking profile. “She is very well. She will be at dinner.”

Now they were out of the city and they gained speed; but they gained almost without Kate’s noticing, for the car was so luxurious and Timothy was such an artist. But when she observed how the trees and fences and houses were beginning to rush by she braced her feet against the nickel footrail and laid her arm along the padded armrest. She leaned back, relaxed. She began to feel that she quite belonged in the car, as though such conveniences had always been at her service, almost as though private chauffeurs and ladies’ maids were an everyday matter. Or was she dramatizing herself? Anyway, it was fun and very, very new. She hoped there would be time to write her mother all about it to-night. She profoundly wished the Hart boys could see her!

But Bertha had turned her smooth profile again. “We are just entering Oakdale,” she informed her, speaking impersonally, so decorously that it might have been to the air. And instantly Kate’s composure and assurance were shivered, her relaxed muscles tensed themselves, her mind became just one big question mark.

Oakdale was a charming suburb. Most of the houses seemed to have lawns and gardens that justified the name of “grounds,” and wealth spoke on every side, but in a tone of good taste and often even beauty. Elms and maples lined the street down which the adventurer’s chariot was bowling.

Oh, which house, which house was Great Aunt Katherine’s? Would Elsie be standing in the doorway? Would Kate know the house by that? Or would she be at a window, or keeping a watch for them on some garden wall?

They suddenly swerved from the main residential street and rolled down a delightful lane bordered by older, more mellowed houses. At the very end of the lane, before a large white house with green blinds, the car came to a stop. What a gracious, dignified house it was, and every bit as imposing and mansionlike as Kate’s mother had described it. There were balconies gay with plants and hanging vines, tall windows, and an absence of anything ambiguous or superfluous. The wide front door, with its shining brass knocker and rows of potted plants at either side, was approached by a dozen or so wide, shallow stone stairs bordered by tall blue larkspur and a golden bell-shaped flower for which Kate did not know the name. The steps were almost upon the lane, but Kate knew that there were extensive “grounds” at the back, and somewhere there the little orchard house.

No Elsie stood at the top of those stone steps or came running around the house from the gardens at the sound of the stopping car. Not even Aunt Katherine made an appearance. Timothy held open the automobile door, Bertha took the suitcase and book, and Kate, with a “Thank you,” to Timothy, started off on the last stage of her journey, that of the climb of the stone steps to her aunt’s front door. Bertha followed close behind. Kate wondered whether she should ring the bell, or wait and let Bertha ring it for her. Or would Bertha open the door and they go in without ringing? Oh, dear! Why hadn’t she asked her mother more explicitly about correct usage when there is a lady’s maid at your heels? But then, perhaps Mother couldn’t have helped her much, for certainly Mother had never been so attended. And then the inner Kate asserted herself. “Don’t be a silly,” it said. “How can it matter which of you rings the doorbell?—and certainly you’re not going to go in without ringing. Bertha’s hands are too full either to ring the bell or open the door. Ring.”

But before her finger had time to reach the button, the door swung open before her as though by magic and Kate stepped in. A maid had opened the door and now stood half-concealed behind it with her face properly vacant. Kate, when she discovered her, gave her a nod and a faint “Thank you.” Then she stood still in the hall, looking about for her aunt. She had almost given up Elsie for the present; but surely her aunt would come now from some part of the house hurrying to greet her with hospitality and show her her room.

But Bertha had no such idea. She did not look about as though expecting any one. “I will lead the way,” she offered, “if you please. There are a good many turns.” And still carrying Kate’s suitcase she walked off up the narrow strip of thick gray velvety material that carpeted the polished stairs. Kate followed. It was a very complicated house, she decided, as they went through doors, down unexpected passages, up steps, and finally around a sharp turn, around two turns, up two steps, and Bertha threw open a door. There Bertha stood back for Kate to pass in ahead of her.

The bedroom that had been assigned to her was exquisitely lovely. It was a little room of beautiful proportions facing the “grounds.” So much care had been spent on its decorations and furnishings that one never thought of all the money that had been spent with the care. Its three long windows, their sills almost on the floor, opened out on to a flowery balcony hung above the garden. The windows were wide open now because of the heat and stood back against the walls like doors. The finest of spiderweb lace was gathered against the panes, and at their sides hung opal-coloured curtains of very soft silk. The same colour, in heavier silk, was used in the spread for the narrow ivory bed, with its painted crimson ramblers at footboard and top. There was a low reading table by the bed and in the centre of it a little crystal lamp with an opal shade. Across from the bed and table stood an ivory dressing table reflecting the balcony’s brilliant plants in its three hinged mirrors. An ivory-coloured chair with a low back and three legs was placed before the dressing table. On one creamy wall hung LePage’s “Joan of Arc,” and on the opposite wall a painting of a little girl with streaming hair leaping across a bright flower bed. Through a door with long crystal mirrors panelled into either side Kate glimpsed a white bathroom with a huge porcelain tub with shining taps and a rack hung thick with wide, creamy towels.

“What a heavenly room!” she exclaimed, enraptured. “Is it mine?”

“Yes, this is your bedroom.” Bertha spoke almost deprecatingly of it. “But there is a sitting-room just across the hall. It is Miss Elsie’s, but while you are here Miss Frazier says you are to share it. That is much more comfortable.”

Kate went directly to a window, hoping to find the orchard house in its view. She was not disappointed. Beyond lawns and flower gardens there was the old orchard with its gnarled, twisted trees, and back among the trees the outlines of a little gray house. Kate was quite moved by this her first glimpse of her mother’s home.

Bertha came up behind, and now was engaged in unbuttoning her cape for her and taking off her hat. But Kate was almost unconscious of these ministrations. She was unconscious, too, when Bertha turned to unpacking her bag.

“There won’t be time for you to change to-night, Miss Frazier said,” Bertha was informing her. “So we’ll just wash you up a bit and brush your hair. Miss Frazier said you were to go down directly, and there’s the first gong anyway.”

A musical note was sounding through the house.

Reluctantly, Kate turned from the window. Bertha followed her into the bathroom, filled the bowl for her with water, and then stood at hand with soap and a towel. For one wild instant Kate wondered whether Bertha meant to wash her face for her! She had a definite feeling of relief when she put the soap and the towel down at the side of the bowl and left her alone. Quickly and efficiently Kate removed the grime of travel. When she went back into her room Bertha was standing by the dressing table, brush in hand.

Kate sat down on the three-legged chair. She thought she had never looked into clearer mirrors than the three hinged ones before her. “Please, I can brush my own hair, it’s so short. I would rather.” Just a few quick strokes, a poke or two, and the bobbed hair with the wing brushed across the forehead was perfectly tidy and crisp.

“I’ll take you to the top of the stairs,” Bertha offered. “You mayn’t have noticed the way very carefully as we came along.”

“No, I am not sure I could find it. But tell me first, where does that door, the other door, in the bathroom go?”

“Oh, that’s Miss Elsie’s door.”

“Miss Elsie’s room! So near! Oh, do you suppose she’s in there?”

“Why, I don’t know. I dressed her for dinner before starting to town for you. She’s more probably downstairs. Dinner is served three minutes after that first gong.”

Kate gave one more glance toward the door that now had become of so much interest to her, before following Bertha. She was glad that she and Elsie were to sleep so near each other. Why, it was a suite of rooms they had. There was something splendid about occupying a suite of rooms. And there was even a sitting-room for them across the hall. How jolly it was and how independent! But where was Elsie?

Kate thanked Bertha when she had been guided to the top of the staircase. “Am I just to go down?” she asked, a little timidly.

“Why, yes. Miss Frazier will be in the drawing-room. It’s at the left. You can’t miss it.”

Bertha faded discreetly back as she spoke, into the shadows of the upper hall, leaving Kate suddenly to her own resources. But after an instant’s hesitation, during which the inner indomitable Kate was summoned up, she passed quietly and with dignity down the gray velvet stair carpet.

CHAPTER IV
LITTLE ORCHARD HOUSE, BEWARE!

The drawing-room extended for almost half the length of the big house. It was the largest room that Kate had ever seen or imagined outside of a castle. Just at first she could not discover her aunt in it. But soon her glance found her sitting down at the farthest end near one of the French doors that stood wide open into the garden. Her head was turned away, but the shape and pose of that head and the way she sat in her chair, with a book but not reading, reminded Kate sharply and poignantly of her mother. Why hadn’t Katherine warned her that they were so much alike?

She went toward her softly because of her shyness, her feet hardly making a sound on the Persian rugs, past the tables and divans and lamps. It was seven o’clock of a July evening now, and the shadows lent a lovely charm to the big room that was peculiarly charming even in broadest daylight. Kate felt as she went toward her aunt that she was walking in a dream. And it was a very nice dream, too, for that glimpse of the likeness of her aunt to her mother had reassured her completely. All her previous ideas of her aunt were swept away, and the anticipations of this visit, which for a little had been dampened, now returned with fresh life.

Miss Frazier turned as Kate came near. Hastily she put her book, still open as Kate’s mother would have, on a table at her hand and rose. She kissed Kate with warmth and dignity and then held her off, the tips of her fingers on her shoulders.

“You’re not one bit like your mother,” she affirmed. “Not one least bit.”

“Don’t accuse me,” Kate said, laughing. “I would have been if I could, of course. But wouldn’t it have been rather confusing to have had three of us so much alike? The names are confusing enough.”

If someone could have told Kate an hour—no, two minutes—ago that on first meeting her aunt she would speak so easily, so without self-consciousness, she would not have believed. She had expected to be constrained, awkward. But then she had never expected Aunt Katherine to be so agreeable as she apparently was.

Aunt Katherine was smiling quite brilliantly. Kate had instantly touched and pleased her. “Does it really seem to you that I am anything like your mother?”

Kate nodded. But even as she nodded, she saw the difference suddenly. Aunt Katherine was taller, of course; but that was not it. Her firm, squarish chin was not neutralized by melting gray eyes as Katherine’s was. Aunt Katherine’s eyes were dark and their expression echoed the strong chin; it was a sure expression, penetrating and above all intellectual. And the lines about the mouth and eyes were lines that Katherine would never have at any age. They were lines of loneliness and trouble.

Even as Kate was thinking all this—lightning-quick thinking it was, of course—she saw the lines deepen and the mouth and eyes harden perceptibly. “It is past dinner time. Didn’t Elsie come down with you?” The hardening was not for Kate’s tardiness; it was for Elsie’s.

“I haven’t seen her. I don’t believe she was in her room or she would have heard me.”

“Haven’t seen Elsie? That is strange! She must be in the orchard or somewhere, and not realize the time.”

Aunt Katherine moved to the garden door, her hand still on Kate’s shoulder. “There she comes now, from the orchard.”

They stepped over the sill and waited for Elsie on the stone flags outside. She was floating through the gardens directly from the orchard. Floating is a better word for it than hurrying because she was such a light and airy creature and above all so graceful. Her approach was almost in the nature of a dance. She was dressed in white, a narrow belt of periwinkle blue at the low waistline.

It was evident when she came nearer that she had not seen the two waiting for her. Her eyes were dropped a little and she was smiling! There was a radiance of happiness about her. At first, in this impression of her, happiness was even more obvious than prettiness. But she was pretty, too, quite enchantingly pretty. Kate, who was not pretty herself, loved it all the more in others. Her appreciation always leapt to meet it.

Elsie was slim, with a fairy grace of face and figure. Her hair, a net of sunlight even now in the growing dusk, was tied at her neck, and its curls straying on her shoulders and at her cheeks shone like fairy gold. Her face was delicately moulded and faintly tinted. It was her chin that struck Kate most. It was an elfin, whimsically pointed chin. In fact, she was such an exquisite creature that Kate, standing there waiting for the instant when she should look up and their eyes meet, felt as though her own sturdy young body belonged to another world.

But Elsie was so absorbed in her happiness that she did not raise her eyes until she was almost upon them. It was Aunt Katherine’s voice that recalled her, and she stopped short a few feet from where they were standing. “Well, Elsie?”

Then at last the eyes of the destined comrades met! Kate was smiling, the corners of her mouth uptilted little wings. Her whole face spoke her delight in Elsie’s extraordinary prettiness and her own expectation of comradeship. No one could have missed what her look meant. But Elsie’s response was a strange one. Instantly the elfin smile vanished, the elfin chin became set, the pretty face and violet eyes hardened. But she took the few remaining steps forward and gave Kate her hand. In a correctly polite but delicately cool way she said, “How do you do?”

Aunt Katherine showed some chagrin at that tone. “This is your cousin, Elsie,” she said. “You are not going to stand on any formality with a cousin who has come for the express purpose of being cousinly. Dinner was announced some minutes ago. Let us go in.”

But what had happened to Kate? She hardly knew herself. She had turned sick, physically sick and faint, when Elsie had looked at her so coolly and indifferently. No one had ever treated her so in all her life before. She had had spats, of course, with her contemporaries, now and then. There had been days when either Sam or Lee or some girl in school refused to speak to her. There had been angry glances, sharp words. But she had never been treated like this. Nothing before had ever turned her sick.

As they moved down the long drawing-room and across the hall to the dining-room Kate asked herself desperately whether she had imagined it all. Could she have heard Elsie’s voice aright? Was the cool, hard glance from Elsie’s eyes insultingly indifferent? How could it be? Why should it be? What had she done? She had done just nothing at all. There was no reason in the world for Elsie to hate or despise her. And so, fortified by her reason and by the wise inner Kate that never wholly forsook her, Kate decided before they reached the dining-room that it had been imagination—partly, anyway. Elsie might not have liked her looks at first, but she had no reason to hate her.

Even so, she did not have the courage to look directly at Elsie when they were finally seated at the table. They were in high-backed carved Italian chairs at a narrow, long, black, much-oiled table. In the centre of the table two marvellously beautiful water lilies floated in an enormous shallow jade bowl. The napkin that Kate half unfolded in her lap was monogrammed damask and very luxurious to her fingers’ touch. The dinner was simple, as simple as the dinners to which Kate was accustomed at home, but it was served with such dignity by a lacy-capped and aproned waitress that before they were finished with the prune-whip dessert Kate felt they had banqueted.

Very early in the meal Kate learned that she need not avoid looking directly at Elsie, for Elsie’s own eyes were averted. Apparently she was languidly interested in the portraits on the opposite wall. At any rate, her gaze was always just a little above Kate’s head or to the right or left of her shoulder. When Aunt Katherine spoke to her she looked at her as she replied. But aside from those polite and clearly spoken answers, she contributed nothing to the conversation.

In contrast to Elsie Aunt Katherine was giving her whole mind to being entertaining and making Kate feel at home. She drew her out about the life in Ashland, the barn that had so ingeniously been turned into a house, Kate’s school in Middletown, the Hart boys, their mother and father, the life at Ashland College, everything that concerned Katherine and Kate. Although Kate hardly realized it, during the course of that first meal she had given her aunt a pretty complete picture of her background, and incidentally of herself.

Just as the finger bowls were brought in Aunt Katherine said, “The little orchard house beyond the garden was your Grandfather Frazier’s, you know, Kate. You will want to explore it, I imagine. To-morrow at breakfast I shall give you the key.”

Kate was delighted. “Oh, may I go into it? Mother wasn’t at all sure it wouldn’t be rented. She wanted me to see it if I possibly could, and tell her all about it.”

“Of course it’s not rented. It is too much part of my grounds, altogether too connected with everything here. A family there would be intolerable. And besides, I consider that the house belongs to your mother. It is only waiting for her.”

But now the eyes of the two girls did meet for the second time. Kate gasped. Fear and anger spoke in Elsie’s direct stare. And Kate was sure she was not imagining now—all the delicate tint had been swept from Elsie’s face. She was pale.

They got up at that minute and followed Aunt Katherine from the dining-room. Elsie turned her head away as they walked. But Kate was too curious now to be definitely unhappy. She wanted only to know the reason of Elsie’s behaviour. And she surprised herself more than a little by finding herself drawn to the sulky, ungracious, frightened girl. Nothing was at all the way she had dreamed it and expected it, it is true. But in some ways it was better. Elsie was more of a person than her dreams had made her, and friendship with her, if only they ever did become friends, might be quite wonderful. Kate did not think this out. It was just her feeling.

In the drawing-room Aunt Katherine sat down at her reading table and picked up her book. “It is after eight,” she told the girls, “and I’m sure Kate should go to bed early. But you may walk in the garden together a little first.”

Now Kate glimpsed the Aunt Katherine of tradition. Neither she nor Elsie had any thought but to obey the command. They went out together to walk in the garden. “Just like that,” Kate said to herself, inwardly smiling. But there was no rebellion in her thought. She distinctly liked Aunt Katherine and was ready to take commands from her. And this command was particularly welcome. Now Elsie must unbend! Now they must find each other.

For a minute they walked in silence and then Kate said, “Let’s go into the apple orchard. I want to see my mother’s house nearer. Do you know I can hardly wait until morning when I shall see it inside, too. Mother has told me so much about it!”

“It isn’t your mother’s house,” Elsie answered quite unexpectedly. “It’s Aunt Katherine’s. And there’s nothing to see in the dark. Just a little old gray house with weeds in the front walk. Even the road to it is all grown over with grass now, for no one goes there ever.”

“I want to see it all the same. It’s where my mother and my grandmother and my grandfather lived. I’m going whether you come or not.”

“Oh, all right,” Elsie acquiesced, sulkily. “But a lot you’ll see in the dark.”

It was just as Elsie had said. It was a little old gray house set down in the centre of the apple orchard with no road leading to it. And weeds stood high in the gravel front walk.

“Why, it’s a fairy house by starlight!” Kate exclaimed, quite forgetting Elsie’s mood in her own.

Elsie spoke in a rather high voice then, a voice that carried all through the orchard: “If it is a fairy house,” she called, “Fairies, beware! Orchard house, beware! If there are fairies in the house put out all lights, hurry away. Aunt Katherine’s nieces are here and Aunt Katherine doesn’t want the house occupied.”

Kate was surprised but quickly pleased, too. Elsie had entered into a game whole-heartedly. Perhaps she was just an ordinary girl, after all! Perhaps she had been imagining absurd things about her. This Elsie calling out into the starry dimness, warning the little house of their approach, was Elsie as she should be, with her fairy-gold curls and elfin chin.

Kate involuntarily drew nearer to her. And then she raised her voice and called in her turn to the little orchard house. “But Aunt Katherine’s not here,” she called. “She is deep in a deep book. So light all your lights, if you wish, look out of your windows, open your doors. Little enchanted house, wake up!”

She was laughing as she finished and holding Elsie’s hand, for she was quite carried away by her own fancy. This was the kind of nonsense she loved, and the little house did seem alive and awake. She felt it responding there in its dim starlight!

Elsie allowed her hand to be held. But she cried, softly, but still in a carrying voice, “No, no, no. Don’t look out! Don’t wake up. There are two of us here. Two. Not one!”

And then the girls stood silent. The game had become so real that Kate would not have been at all astonished to see fairy lights at the windows, to hear windows opening and fairy laughter. But she heard nothing except the crickets in the uncut grass and Elsie’s hurried breathing.

“Come,” she whispered. “Let’s go all around the house”—and off she started, still holding Elsie’s hand. Elsie could only go, too. And at the back of the house, the side that was in view only of the orchard and vacant fields beyond, Kate noticed two windows wide open in the second story.

“Does Aunt Katherine let those windows stay open like that?” she asked, curiously. “Those are the windows in the study. I know from Mother’s telling. Suppose it should rain to-night? It must be an oversight. Let’s go back and get the key from Aunt Katherine now to-night and close them for her. Won’t it be fun to go in by starlight, just we two alone!”

Elsie shook her head violently and pulled her hand away at the same time. There was a break in her voice almost as though she were in danger of bursting into tears.

“You needn’t go being a busybody the very first hour you are here,” she exclaimed. “I guess Aunt doesn’t need your advice about such things. Come away. Come out of the orchard.”

Kate followed her, nonplussed, at sea. “What is the matter?” she demanded. “What are you afraid of, Elsie Frazier?” Then, stopping suddenly, “What was that? Listen!” Surely a door had closed softly up there in the room with the windows open!

“What was what?”

“Didn’t you hear?”

“No, of course I didn’t hear anything.”

“A door closed up there.”

“Nonsense! How could a door close up there?”

“Well, it did. I heard it just as plain. But perhaps it was a breeze that closed it. Only I don’t feel any breeze.”

“It must have been a breeze.”

“Well, it was a careful breeze. It shut the door ever so gently. Quite as though a door knob was turned. Oh, Elsie, do you suppose it is fairies—or something weird?”

“I don’t suppose anything. And Aunt Katherine will be expecting us in. Come.”

As they went Kate turned to look back several times at the orchard house. But no fairy lights twinkled for her in the windows, no doors or windows opened, no fairy stood on the doorstone beckoning her back. It was just a little old gray house in an orchard. But even so Kate felt it alive, awake somehow. Elsie could not spoil her feeling about it.

Just outside the lighted drawing-room Elsie turned about and faced Kate. She was not quite so tall and she was slighter. But her whole body was drawn up with extraordinary force and her face, in spite of its delicate elfin quality, was determined.

“Kate Marshall,” she said in a quiet tone, “you’re not to say one word to Aunt Katherine about those windows. Not one single word! And what’s more, you’re not to use the key that she will give you to-morrow. It’s not your mother’s house any more. You’ll only be disappointed. There’s nothing of her in there at all. I shall hate you and hate you and HATE you if you use that key. You’ve got to promise me.”

Kate did not flinch before this unexpected attack. But she was amazed. “Of course I sha’n’t promise you,” she contradicted. “You’re a silly to think you can make me. What’s the matter with you, anyway?”

Elsie still looked at her, but her firmness, her determination melted. Her lips trembled. Unshed tears glistened in her eyes. When she spoke her tone was changed completely. “Please, please,” she besought Kate. “You are just a girl even if you are—well, even if you are Kate Marshall. Please promise me that you’ll wait a week before exploring the orchard house. After that I won’t care. Go and live in it, if you like. But just for a week, promise me.”

“No, I won’t promise.” But Kate was softening. “I won’t promise. But perhaps, since you care so much, I won’t go in to-morrow or the next day. Perhaps I’ll stay away a week. Only I think you’ll have to tell me why.”

But Elsie shook her head. “I can’t tell you why. You’ll know for yourself within a few days. You’ve promised?”

“I have not promised. And I think you ought to explain to me. Are you sure you won’t? I’m a pretty good person at keeping a secret. If I knew, I might promise.”

Elsie shook her head. Kate saw the tears still glistening in her eyes. She felt brutal to have made a fairy cry!

“Don’t, don’t cry,” she begged softly. “I won’t use the key to-morrow, anyway. I promise you that. And I’ll tell you before I do use it. I don’t see why I shouldn’t put it off for a week if you care so much. I’m not a pig.”

“And you won’t even prowl around the orchard house during that week?”

Kate, instantly forgetting her momentary pity, grew hot. “I never prowl. What a nasty word!”

“You prowled to-night.”

“I didn’t. We were playing a game with the house. I’m going in.”

With high-held head, flaming cheeks, and bright eyes Kate stepped into the drawing-room. Elsie was at her side, cool, calm, no trace of recent tears. In spite of Kate’s flash of real anger Elsie was well satisfied with the outcome of their “walk in the garden.” For she felt that Kate would be one to keep her word. Elsie might breathe freely, for a day more at any rate, and not live in hourly terror of the discovery of her secret, and the secret of the orchard house.

Aunt Katherine had been watching them through the glass of the long door. She smiled, apparently well pleased, as they came in now. She said, “I am glad that you are getting acquainted. You should have a very nice month together, you two. Kate must be tired, and I advise you both to go right to bed. Breakfast is at quarter to eight.”

“She was watching us while we talked at the door,” Elsie whispered as they went up the stairs. “She thought we couldn’t leave off talking. She imagines we’re bosom friends already.”

But Kate walked on up with a set face. She did not trouble to answer.

CHAPTER V
KATE MAKES UP A FACE

As they neared their doors Elsie said, “Please tell Bertha if she’s in your room that I shall be in the sitting-room when she’s through helping you. I’m going right to bed then.”

She stopped with her hand on the knob. “Wouldn’t you like to see the sitting-room? It’s yours, too, now.”

Kate looked in as Elsie opened the door and stood back. Now she knew why Bertha had said that room was more “comfortable” than her bedroom. In contrast to it her bedroom was almost nun-like. There were deep chairs upholstered in gay cretonne, cretonne with parrots and poppies and birds of paradise glowing against its yellow background. There was even a little lounge, heaped with yellow pillows, drawn up under the windows. In the centre of the room stood a square cherry-wood reading table, and the walls were almost lined with bookshelves already about one third filled with books. On the table stood a glass bowl filled with red roses. A Japanese floor lamp cast a mellow light over everything. In one corner a practical old Governor Winthrop desk with many drawers and a wide writing leaf drew Kate’s eyes. Imagine having a desk like that just for one’s own!

But she did not show her appreciation of the room. She simply glanced about it, as Elsie seemed to expect her to, and then muttering a crusty “good-night” crossed the hall to her own room.

Bertha was waiting for her there. Evidently Aunt Katherine had instructed her that Kate would retire early. The opal lamp by the bed was shedding its delicate radiance through the room, the bed was turned down, Kate’s dressing gown and nightgown were spread across its foot, and her bedroom slippers stood near at hand. Her bag had long since been unpacked and put away. The “King of the Fairies” and the mystery story—Sam and Lee’s gift—lay on the bed table under the lamp.

Kate was very glad of her own cool, clear little room. She liked it better than all that colour and ease across the hall. And in any case she would never be able to share that other room with Elsie. She determined not to go into it at all—no, not even to look over the books!

“Miss Elsie is in the sitting-room,” she told Bertha. “She said to tell you that when you were ready she would go to bed. I don’t need any help, truly.”

“Sha’n’t I even brush your hair, Miss Kate? That is so restful.”

“You’ve unpacked for me. Thank you very much. My short hair doesn’t need much brushing.”

So, reluctantly, for Miss Frazier had requested her to attend to both girls equally, Bertha took her dismissal. In a minute Kate heard voices on the other side of Elsie’s door. Then Elsie opened the door and looked in through the bathroom.

“Aunt Katherine says we’re to leave these doors open,” she informed Kate, calmly. “That is so you won’t be lonely.”

Kate nodded an “all right.” But to herself she said, “I’d be a heap less lonely if you’d close the door and I’d never see your face again.”

She undressed well out of sight of Elsie’s room. When she was in nightgown, dressing robe, and slippers, she sat down on the three-legged ivory stool, before the hinged mirrors, brush in hand. She was surprised by the expression of her own face as it looked back at her grimly out of the glass. All its humour, its charm, was gone. She was just a rather plain young girl. And as she looked at this disenchanted reflection it suddenly went misty and blurred. She saw tears rising in its eyes.

With an angry hand she dashed them away and stuck out her tongue at the blurred face in the mirror. Then came her own laugh, the eyes crinkling to slits, the mouth freed from its set lines and lifting wings in a smile.

“Idiot,” she whispered. “To cry about her! She’s a stuck-up little pig, but you needn’t become a grouchy glum just for that. Be yourself in spite of her.”

But as she went toward the windows to push them a little farther back, for the night was a warm and beautiful one, she turned her head and looked through the open doors into Elsie’s room. Elsie was sitting before her own dressing table, a replica of Kate’s. She was in an exquisitely soft-looking pink dressing gown edged about the neck and the long flowing sleeves with swansdown. Bertha stood behind her, brushing her curls with long, even strokes. The eyes of the two girls met in Elsie’s glass. Flashingly, Kate was glad she had made up a face and got it over with; otherwise she would certainly have made up just the same face now, at Elsie, before thinking.

The pairs of eyes held each other in the glass for an instant. It must have been something deceiving in the twin lights glowing at either side of Elsie’s mirror, or in the glass itself, Kate decided afterward, but for that instant it seemed that a comrade had looked questioningly out of the mirror at her! But the hidden comrade, if such it was, vanished even before Kate had time to turn away.

What a delicious bed Aunt Katherine had given her! She delighted in its scented linen and light covers. She punched the fluffy pillows up into a bolster, slipped out of her dressing gown and in between the smooth, lavender-scented sheets. Sitting there against the pillows she took “The King of the Fairies” on to her knee. She couldn’t sleep quite yet, she knew. Why, at home she seldom went to bed before her mother, and now it was not yet nine. The very sight, even the feeling of this book in her hands filled her with a happy stir deep in the far wells of imagination. She opened it casually. Any place would do since she already knew it practically by heart. The very sight of the smooth, clearly printed pages with their wide margins freed her. She was ready for space now and clear, disentangled adventurings into light.

Although the book was titled “The King of the Fairies” it was not at all a fairy story for children. Kate had only just reached the age when it could be cared about. It began with a girl and a boy quarrelling on a fence in a meadow. It was a real quarrel, a horrid quarrel with hot and sharp and bitter words. But it is interrupted by a tramp happening by. He asks them a direction and they stop their recriminations for the time to point him his way scornfully. Accepting their directions he still tarries a while to ask them if they themselves don’t want some pointing. Then the story, the marvellous story begins. He points to an elder bush and asks them what it is. They tell him glibly. Then he gets on to the fence between them and with his eyes level with theirs asks them to look again. Everything is changed for the girl and boy in that instant. They begin seeing as the tramp sees. They are in Paradise or Fairyland: the author himself makes no clear distinction. But the elder bush is now much more than an elder bush. And the meadow is full of a life the girl and boy had never suspected. There are other beings moving in it, fairy beings, perhaps. Not only is the invisible made visible to the girl and boy seeing as the tramp sees, but the, until then at least, partly visible—the brook, the trees, the very stones and the elder bush—are seen to have more life than could be suspected. And all colours are changed, too. The boy and girl are seeing things in a new spectrum.

Finally the three get down from the fence and wander about in this Fairyland that has always been here truly but is only now seen. The book is their day in the meadow. And when you have turned the last page you do not remember it as a book. You remember it as a day in Fairyland or Paradise—or as a day on which you saw things clear. And you never doubt for a minute that the author himself is one who has certainly seen like that. Perhaps he only saw it in a flash, but he did see for himself and with his own eyes.

In the end the boy and girl return to the fence and the tramp departs on the way they had pointed out to him. But as he goes, he turns about when he gets to the elder bush and they realize in that last glance from his eyes that he is the King of the Fairies. Then as he turns again and walks on, as long as he is in their sight, he is simply a common tramp.

But their quarrel has dropped for ever dead between them. A boy and a girl who have actually walked in Fairyland together and seen things clear have nothing to quarrel about, and so long as they both shall live can have nothing to quarrel about again.

And though they had surely seen things clear for a whole day in the meadow—the sun had risen to the meridian and gone down into the west while they wandered—now when they look at each other there is no indication that a minute has passed. The sun is where it was at the height of their quarrel! And so it appears that the tramp’s arrival and stay and departure and their whole day in the meadow was squeezed into perhaps one straight meeting of their eyes as they quarrelled.

But they do not spend themselves in wonder. This boy and girl are Wisdom’s own children, in spite of the momentary silliness that had plunged them head-first into the darkness of an enmity; they accept the gods’ gifts. And for a boy and a girl who have spent a day in Fairyland together, or for that matter only spent a minute there together, the gods’ gift is marriage.

Katherine, when she had finished the book, had said that it was the most perfect love story she had ever read; she wished she were rich enough to give it to all the lovers she knew. And she said, too, that the author must be a very wonderful person, a great man in some field of life. Perhaps that was why he had not signed his name to the work.

As Kate read now, the conversation between Elsie and Bertha in the next room was a humming undertone to her thoughts. She could not have caught their words if she had listened. But she had no inclination to listen. She was moving in a world where quarrels and bitter feelings were an impossibility. She was seeing things through the eyes of the King of the Fairies. She was in the meadows that she knew at home, feeling the larger life there that the King of the Fairies had made known to her. She was standing, tall, in the body of an elm tree, spreading with its leaves to the sun, feeling with its roots into the vibrating ground.

Suddenly a voice came to her. It was a long way she rushed back to find the voice. Bertha was standing beside her bed.

“Shall I turn out your light, Miss Kate? Or do you wish to read?”

Kate did not know that Bertha had come into the room at all. Elsie’s light was out, and if the doors through must be left open, Kate’s light would disturb her. Of course she must put out her light and try to sleep. She was on the verge of saying, “I will put out my own light, thanks,” but the meadow from which she had rushed back had, oddly enough as some might think, put her into more perfect harmony with her own restricted four walls. So she said, “You may put the light out, thank you.” And she did not even smile to herself when Bertha bent over the table and pulled at the little chain that was much nearer Kate’s reach than hers. She accepted the service naturally, since such acceptance was Aunt Katherine’s wish and the purpose of Bertha’s presence here.

“Good-night,” Bertha spoke out of the sudden darkness.

“Good-night,” Kate answered. Then soft footfalls, and she was alone in the room.

But though “The King of the Fairies” had done a good deal for Kate it had not had time to do enough to make her call a “good-night” to Elsie. Suppose Aunt Katherine knew the two girls were going to sleep without a word to each other!

From her bed, now that the room was dark, Kate could see the dim apple orchard under starlight. She rose on her elbow and strained her eyes for the outlines of the little orchard house. She found it by hard looking. How mysterious, how lonely, still how alive out there it stood. And she had heard a door close softly, just as though a door knob had turned as they stood below those open back windows. And why were those windows open? Elsie knew, Kate was sure. The little orchard house harboured some secret of Elsie’s.

But what was that! Kate sat up in bed and bent toward the window, her eyes straining. A light, flickering, was moving down through the house! Kate watched it as it went by several windows, breathless. Soon it disappeared altogether, and a second after Kate thought she heard the front door of the little orchard house softly closing, or opening; but that must have been fancy, for the orchard house was much too far away for a sound of that quality to carry to her.

As she curled down into bed again her eyes crinkled with her smile in the darkness. Well, here was mystery. She would write Sam and Lee that she would save their mystery story for duller times. Now she was living in one!

The Vanishing Comrade: A Mystery Story for Girls

THE
VANISHING COMRADE
A Mystery Story for Girls

CONTENTS

THE
VANISHING COMRADE

The Vanishing Comrade

CHAPTER I
GREAT AUNT KATHERINE COMMANDS

CHAPTER II
THE BOY IN THE FLOWERY, DRAGONY PICTURE FRAME

CHAPTER III
THE COMRADE DOES NOT APPEAR

CHAPTER IV
LITTLE ORCHARD HOUSE, BEWARE!

CHAPTER V
KATE MAKES UP A FACE

The Vanishing Comrade: A Mystery Story for Girls

THEVANISHING COMRADEA Mystery Story for Girls

CONTENTS

THEVANISHING COMRADE

The Vanishing Comrade

CHAPTER IGREAT AUNT KATHERINE COMMANDS

CHAPTER IITHE BOY IN THE FLOWERY, DRAGONY PICTURE FRAME

CHAPTER IIITHE COMRADE DOES NOT APPEAR

CHAPTER IVLITTLE ORCHARD HOUSE, BEWARE!

CHAPTER VKATE MAKES UP A FACE

THE
VANISHING COMRADE
A Mystery Story for Girls

THE
VANISHING COMRADE

CHAPTER I
GREAT AUNT KATHERINE COMMANDS

CHAPTER II
THE BOY IN THE FLOWERY, DRAGONY PICTURE FRAME

CHAPTER III
THE COMRADE DOES NOT APPEAR

CHAPTER IV
LITTLE ORCHARD HOUSE, BEWARE!

CHAPTER V
KATE MAKES UP A FACE