Letty and the Twins

Helen Sherman Griffith

“I THOUGHT YOU MIGHT LIKE SOME CHOCOLATES”

LETTY AND THE TWINS

BY

Helen Sherman Griffith

AUTHOR OF
“LETTY OF THE CIRCUS” “LETTY’S NEW HOME”
“LETTY’S SISTER” “LETTY’S TREASURE”
“LETTY AT THE CONSERVATORY” “LETTY’S SPRINGTIME”
“LETTY AND MISS GREY”

ILLUSTRATED BY FRANCES D. JONES

THE PENN PUBLISHING COMPANY
PHILADELPHIA MCMXVII

COPYRIGHT 1910
BY THE PENN PUBLISHING COMPANY

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

INTRODUCTION

Those who have read “Letty of the Circus” will remember that Letty Grey was a little city girl whose brother was a member of a troupe of acrobats. When it became necessary to help her mother who was ill Letty herself became a member of the troupe and joined them in their performances at a summer resort. One day she bravely saved the lives of two little children, Jane and Christopher, who were threatened by an angry bear. This was the beginning of a warm friendship which is seen ripening in the present book. Letty leaves the circus and finds a new mother, and her sunny nature wins for her many friends. Something more about her will be found in “Letty’s New Home,” “Letty’s Sister,” “Letty’s Treasure,” “Letty’s Good Luck,” “Letty at the Conservatory,” “Letty’s Springtime” and “Letty and Miss Grey.”

LETTY AND THE TWINS

[CHAPTER I—ARRIVING AT THE FARM]

“Oh, Kit, isn’t it just fun!” cried Jane, her rosy, chubby face beaming. “How fast we are going!”

“Ho,” exclaimed Christopher, “it’s not so fast. Not so awfully fast, is it, grandfather? I’d like to go about sixty miles an hour. That would be going for you.”

“Oh, Kit!” breathed Jane in mingled awe and admiration.

Jane and Christopher—or Kit as he was generally called to distinguish him from his father, whose name also was Christopher—were twins, and so far along the course of their short lives had shared everything, from peppermint drops to ideas. The stern fact that Christopher was a boy and Jane a girl was just beginning faintly to dawn upon them—a state demonstrated by Jane’s unqualified admiration of everything her brother said and did, and by his occasional condescension of manner toward her.

Jane leaned back in her parlor car seat hugging her doll—a wonderful new one with flaxen hair turned up with a comb and dressed “like a lady”—quite content with the rate at which the train was speeding through the green fields and villages; while Christopher bobbed about from seat to seat, trying the view from each side of the train in turn and wishing he could look out on both sides at once.

There were very few passengers in the parlor car, for it was early in the season for summer visitors to go to the country. Besides the twins and their grandparents there were only three other passengers: two gentlemen who were very busy talking and paid no attention to any one else, and a sweet-faced lady with gray hair who sat at the other end of the car and who watched the children with great interest. She looked as if she would like to make friends with them.

After a while she took a candy box out of her satchel and catching the twins’ eyes, beckoned to them, holding out the open box. Christopher was for bolting down the car aisle at once, but Jane caught him back and whispered something to her grandmother, who looked up from her book, exchanged smiles with the sweet-faced stranger, bowed and said “yes” to Jane.

“I thought you might like some chocolates,” said the lady as the children approached. “Won’t you sit down there opposite me?”

“Thank you,” said Jane politely, and the twins tucked themselves side by side into the big chair. The lady’s sweet, interested manner and the chocolates quickly put matters upon a friendly footing, and in two minutes the children were prattling away as if they had known Mrs. Hartwell-Jones (for that, she told them, was her name, watching out of the corner of her eye as she pronounced it to see if it sounded familiar to them) as if they had known her all their lives. Their own names, age and family history were soon told.

“Our mother and father have gone to Europe for four months,” announced Christopher importantly. “Father had to go on business and mother wanted to go with him and so——”

“She did not want to go, Kit,” corrected Jane. “The doctor thought she ought to.”

“Well, she did want to go. How could she help wanting to go to Europe?” demanded Christopher triumphantly. “So she and father went, and we are to spend the whole summer on the farm.”

“The whole summer,” repeated Jane, happily. But she swallowed hard as she thought of her father and mother off in the middle of the ocean on a big ship.

“It’s a real farm,” went on Christopher, “with cows and chickens and pigs.”

“And horses and dogs and cats,” added Jane, the lump in her throat already gone.

“Oh, they don’t count. You could have horses and dogs and cats without having a farm,” said Christopher. “There are big fields where the men plough and cut hay, and there must be dozens of cows,” he explained to Mrs. Hartwell-Jones.

“And where is this wonderful farm?”

“It’s near Hammersmith. We drive there; miles and miles!”

“The farm is called ‘Sunnycrest,’” put in Jane eagerly, “because the house—grandfather’s house—stands up on a hill. The farmhouse and stables are down the hill across the dearest little creek, where they have a dairy and make butter. Huldah lets me help sometimes. Huldah cooks for grandmother but she lives at the farm, she and Josh.”

“Josh is grandfather’s ‘right-hand man,’ grandfather calls him. He bosses the whole farm and he’s awfully nice.”

“It all sounds ‘awfully nice,’” said the gray-haired lady a little wistfully. “I am going to Hammersmith, too, only I have to stay in the village. Perhaps you will come to see me some time?”

“Yes’m,” said Jane politely. “If grandmother will let us.”

Grandmother herself joined them just then. She was afraid that the children might be tiring their new friend. She and Mrs. Hartwell-Jones introduced themselves to each other and grandmother sat down in the chair out of which the children, mindful of their manners, had tumbled. They stood quietly in the aisle for a moment or two, but as grandmother would not allow them to have any more chocolates and the conversation promised to be quite “grown up,” they ran back to their own seats.

Presently the train slowed down and finally came to a stop beside a long, dilapidated platform with a small, low wooden house. There were several sets of tracks branching out from this platform in different directions and on the platform was a group of people, standing about as if waiting for a train.

“What’s the matter, grandfather?” asked Christopher a little impatiently. “I thought this train wasn’t going to stop again until we got to Hammersmith.”

The conductor, who was passing through the train, heard Christopher’s question and stopped obligingly to explain.

“We have to wait for the Mount Pleasant train here at the Junction, sonny,” he said. “It’s a bit late, but we won’t be delayed long. Them people,” he added to grandfather, pointing through the window to the group on the platform, “have been waiting for it ’most four hours. They’re a circus troupe.”

A circus troupe! A traveling circus—how interesting! Jane and Christopher pressed eagerly to the window and stared out at the small knot of people. There was nothing remarkable about them except that they all looked tired and a little anxious. Jane surveyed them thoughtfully.

“Poor people,” she said. “I’m sorry they have to stand there so long, waiting. They look tired. And there’s a baby—oh, Kit!” She grasped her brother suddenly by the sleeve, still peering out through the window. “Oh, Kit, it is, it is!” she exclaimed excitedly. “It’s Letty!”

“Who, the baby is?” asked Christopher contemptuously. “Do stop clawing me, Jane.”

“No, no, the girl holding the baby. Do look, Kit. Don’t you see her?”

Jane loosened her hold of Christopher’s sleeve to point out a child standing a little apart from the waiting group. The girl was dressed in a faded, clean frock of pink gingham and her glossy brown hair was smoothly brushed and braided. Her face was turned away from the children, but what they could see of it looked thin and sad. She carried a jolly, restless, heavy baby in her arms who was crowing and holding out its arms toward the locomotive. Christopher looked at the girl a moment in hesitation.

“I don’t believe it’s Letty. But it does look some like her,” he added doubtfully. “I wish she would turn around more so I could see her face better.”

As if in answer to his wish the little girl did turn just then and looked directly at the children. Perhaps she had felt the intentness of Jane’s earnest gaze. At sight of the twins her face suddenly brightened and she walked slowly down the platform toward the car in which they were sitting.

“It is Letty!” exclaimed the twins together in great excitement, and they commenced to nod and smile with all their might.

“Oh, grandfather, mayn’t we go to the platform to speak to her? We haven’t seen her in three whole years!” cried Jane eagerly. “We thought she was lost.”

“Speak to whom?” asked grandfather in great surprise, looking out of the window over the children’s shoulders.

“Why, to Letty. See, there she is. She’s the little girl who saved our lives from the bear. Hurry, before the train starts,” explained Christopher, jumping up from his seat.

He and Jane rushed pell-mell down the aisle to the door, followed by Mr. Baker.

“What is it? What has happened?” asked grandmother in some alarm, looking up from her conversation with Mrs. Hartwell-Jones. “What are they going to see?”

“They say that the little girl is outside who saved their lives from the attack of the mad bear that time at Willow Grove Park.”

“Really?” exclaimed grandmother much interested. “Then I should like to talk to her, too.”

She rose from her seat, but paused to tell the story to Mrs. Hartwell-Jones.

“It happened three years ago. My daughter-in-law had taken the children to some sort of entertainment out at Willow Grove. A trained bear, driven mad by the heat, they supposed, broke loose from its keeper and charged the audience. Jane and Christopher were sitting in the very front row and the bear was almost upon them when this little girl—one of the performers, an acrobat, I think—jumped down from the stage and threw a cover over the bear’s head so that he was blinded and his trainer captured him easily enough.”

“What great presence of mind,” said Mrs. Hartwell-Jones. “I should like to see the little girl, too.”

“Then let us step outside. My daughter did go to see them at once. The child’s mother was quite a lady but in most reduced circumstances; and she went again later, meaning to help them, but learned that the mother had died and the little girl had been taken away by friends, she was never able to find out where. If this is the child, I should like to do something for her.”

In the meantime, Jane and Christopher had rushed to the door of the car, their faces beaming with excitement and delight. The girl had transferred the baby she was carrying hurriedly to its mother and stood watching the door with an air of shy expectancy.

“Oh, Letty, Letty, to think that we have found you again!” exclaimed Jane, kissing her heartily, while Christopher capered about them in glee.

“Find me? Did you ever look for me?” asked the little girl, her face lighting up with pleasure.

“Why, of course we did,” answered Christopher. “Didn’t we say we’d come again? We got your address from the boarding-house at Willow Grove and we went to see you—but you had gone away.”

“We were so sorry for you,” whispered Jane, slipping her hand into Letty’s.

Poor Letty turned away to hide the tears that sprang to her eyes. She was greatly changed, poor child, in those three years. Her face had lost all its pretty roundness and her eyes seemed too large for the rest of her face, they were so wide and sad.

“Have you been with the circus all this time?” asked Christopher with great interest.

“Yes,” she answered sadly. “There hasn’t seemed anything else to do. My—my brother Ben died too, last year,” she added with a little sob.

“Oh, I am so sorry—so, so sorry!” repeated Jane softly. “Poor Letty, I wish you could come with us.”

“We’re going to the farm to spend the summer,” explained Christopher. “Our grandfather’s farm. Don’t you remember we told you about it?”

“Indeed I do remember. How happy you both must be.”

“We are. And wouldn’t you like to come too?” asked Jane impulsively.

“Of course I should like it, if I could,” and Letty’s voice grew very wistful.

Just then a long train, with bell jangling and escaping steam hissing, rolled up to the opposite platform with a loud rumble. The waiting group of people hastened to get on it.

“Letty, Letty!” called some one sharply. “Come at once.”

“Oh, Letty,” cried Jane, “must you go? Please don’t. We don’t want to lose you again!”

“Letty, you’ll miss the train,” called a gruff masculine voice, and added, “Hurry up, now,” in a tone not to be disobeyed.

The conductor of the waiting train, his eye on his watch, emphasized the need of haste by shouting “All aboard” very peremptorily.

Letty stopped and kissed Jane and then bounded across the platform with all her old grace and agility.

“Write to me. Please write to me!” shrieked Jane after her.

The twins waved their hands frantically as Letty turned for a farewell nod, and watched the train pull out.

“We don’t even know where she’s gone,” wailed Jane. “We’ll never see her again!”

Mrs. Baker stepped from the doorway of the parlor car, with Mrs. Hartwell-Jones behind her.

“Has the little girl gone?” she asked regretfully. “I wanted to see her.”

“She’s gone,” Jane replied disconsolately. “And we don’t even know where.”

“Dear me, how very unsatisfactory,” sighed grandmother. “I should have liked so much to do something for her.”

Then they all went back into the car again as their own train began to move.

“From the fleeting glimpse I had of her, I should say that the child had a rather unusual face,” remarked Mrs. Hartwell-Jones thoughtfully, as the two ladies seated themselves again. “Can you tell me anything more about her, Mrs. Baker?”

“Janey,” said grandmother later, when they were all making ready to leave the train, “can’t you guess who Mrs. Hartwell-Jones really is? Don’t you remember her name?”

Jane shook her head.

“Why, she is the lady who wrote that lovely book you got last Christmas, of which you are so fond.”

“The ‘Jimmie-Boy’ book?” asked Jane in an awestruck voice. “But that is by——” Opening her own miniature dress-suit case, of which she was immensely proud, Jane got out the book in question and spelled out the author’s name: “Mary C. Hartwell-Jones.”

“Exactly,” said grandmother with great satisfaction. “That is her whole name, ‘Mary C. Hartwell-Jones.’ She has taken rooms in Mrs. Parsons’ house at Hammersmith for the whole summer, and she expects to write another book!”

“Oh!” exclaimed Jane, much impressed. “And she asked us to come and see her, grandmother.”

Jane stared hard at the lady with whom she had chattered so freely and familiarly a short time before and whom she now regarded with the greatest possible awe. Then, crossing to Christopher, she told him the wonderful news. And from that time on Mrs. Hartwell-Jones was known to the two children as “The lady who wrote books.”

[CHAPTER II—SUNNYCREST]

At Hammersmith a big, old-fashioned carryall stood beside the station platform and behind it a light spring wagon, the two drivers standing side by side on the platform, watching the descending passengers anxiously. The older man was Joshua Adams, the head man on grandfather’s farm. Grandmother always called him Joshua, but to every one else he was Josh. His companion, Jo Perkins, a young stable boy familiarly known as “Perk,” was new on the place since the twins’ last visit, and they did not know him. They eyed him curiously as they shook hands heartily with Joshua, who was an old and long-tried friend.

“My, my, you’ve growed sence I see ye,” exclaimed Joshua, standing the children off and looking at them in mock amazement. “Most big enough to be giants in a side-show.”

“Oh, shucks,” said Christopher, squirming with embarrassment. “Has Juno got any new pups?”

“Well, you have growed, ’pon my word. Now I leave it to Miss Jane if you haven’t. Hain’t you, Miss Jane? And you’re both of you dressed different now, so ’t I can tell ye apart,” he added teasingly.

Of course Joshua had seen the children many times since the day Christopher had been promoted to trousers, but he never lost a chance of reminding the boy that he had passed through a petticoat period.

Perk felt a little bit out of this intimate party. He stood awkwardly in the background, fingering his hat and winking gravely at Christopher whenever he caught his eye. Grandfather bustled up presently, followed by the station agent wheeling the trunks on a truck, which Perk proceeded to pile on the wagon. Joshua untied the team and mounted to the front seat of the big carriage.

“Where’s Nelly Gray?” asked Jane, missing the gray mare with the white star on her forehead.

“Why, Nelly, she’s out to pastur’ for a while. Got a nail in her foot.”

“Oh, poor horsey! How it must have hurt! Did you get it out?”

“Why of course, greeney,” interposed Christopher knowingly, “else the horse would have died, wouldn’t it, Josh?”

Jane climbed into the carriage and sat down opposite her grandparents, but Christopher hung back.

“I want to go on the wagon. Mayn’t I, please?”

“Oh, yes,” consented grandfather good-naturedly, “if you promise to sit still and not ask to drive.”

Christopher avoided Jane’s reproachful look and capered off joyfully. Jane felt hurt at being deserted by her twin so soon, but she knew that Christopher was anxious to make Perk’s acquaintance.

“I s’pose boys can’t help likin’ other boys a little,” she reflected philosophically, and hugged her doll comfortably.

In spite of her nine years and her brother’s teasing, Jane persisted in playing with dolls and had a large, well-beloved family.

“Say, I’m going to ride home with you,” announced Christopher, climbing up on the high wagon seat. “Shall I hold the horse for you while you strap on the trunks?”

“He’s hitched,” drawled Perk with a twinkle in his eye. “But I guess ’twon’t hurt if you want to hold the lines.”

“Oh, I didn’t notice that he was tied,” said Christopher, a bit crestfallen, and feeling his youth. “I’d like to drive,” he added with reviving spirit as Perk strapped on the last trunk and mounted to his seat (swinging up over the wheel after the horse had started, to Christopher’s keen envy), “but grandfather said I mustn’t ask. But I could. A friend of my father’s has an automobile and he let me steer it one day, oh, a long way.”

Perk was distinctly impressed by this statement and dropped some of the patronage from his manner. Perk had never even seen an automobile.

As they drove down the length of the village street, Christopher was on the lookout for changes. It was two years since he had visited in Hammersmith, which left plenty of time for improvements. Each new building or alteration had to be remarked upon to Perk, for Christopher’s tongue would never stay quiet. Jane declared once that it wagged in his sleep.

“I see somebody else has got the blacksmith’s forge. Mr. Parsons used to run it.”

“Yes, but Mr. Parsons is too tony now to shoe horses. He makes wagons an’ keeps summer boarders.”

“Hello, Jones has got a partner. My, but they used to have good sarsaparilla there,” exclaimed Christopher, smacking his lips.

“They do still,” answered Perk, smacking his.

“I’ll treat you some time. I’m to have fifteen cents a week pocket money all summer, an’ so’s Jane. Hi, there’s a new store. Say, it’s a dandy.”

“It’s a newspaper office up-stairs. Downstairs they have a store where nothin’ costs more’n ten cents; and lots of things cost only five. Ain’t that a queer sort of store?”

“Not so queer as I’ve seen. Why, they’ve got a store in the city where everything costs ninety-nine cents. My mother’d never let me buy there, but they had mighty pretty things in the windows. Painted plates and things. Lots of people go there because they think it’s so much cheaper than a dollar. Aren’t some people silly?”

They had turned out of the village by this time into the country road which led to Sunnycrest.

“Do you play marbles?” asked Christopher, patting a bag of beloved alleys in his trousers pocket.

“Naw—that’s a kid’s game,” said Perk contemptuously. He was feeling a trifle sore over the fact that this boy, so much younger than he, had ridden in an automobile and had seen a ninety-nine-cent store.

Christopher withdrew his hand suddenly from his pocket.

“Yes, isn’t it?” he agreed quickly. Then, lest Perk should have heard the rattle of the marbles he said carelessly: “I play with Jane sometimes—to amuse her. And there’s a boy lives in our street that coaxes me to have a game with him once in a while. I do it to please him ’cause he’s lame, but it never seems fair to play for keeps with him. He’s only eight and a half.”

Christopher hauled the bag of marbles out of his pocket and displayed them indifferently, as if they were spoils. But all the time his heart thumped guiltily at the white lie he was acting, for up to the present moment he had loved the game of marbles and had looked upon it as a manly sport.

“Gee, did you win all them? They’re beauties,” exclaimed Perk in admiration, transferring the reins to one hand in order to examine the different marbles.

“No, not exactly all,” admitted Christopher, “some I had. And some I traded,” he added, thrusting the bag back into his pocket.

“Hum. Want to swap knives?”

Christopher’s heart sank. His father had presented him with a very wonderful, five-bladed knife as a farewell gift. Christopher had not even whittled with it yet. The idea of parting with it hurt. He drew it from his pocket with mingled pride and concern. He did not want to appear unmanly, but he was quite sure that Perk could have nothing half so good to trade.

But Perk saw the value of the knife and was square enough to refuse to take any advantages. He admired it even more extravagantly than he had done the marbles.

“Of course you don’t want to swap something that was a present,” he said. “’Twouldn’t be treating your daddy right.”

“You can borrow it whenever you want,” replied Christopher gratefully.

Presently Perk called Christopher’s attention to several flaming posters that decorated the rail fences on either side of the road.

“There’s a circus comin’ to town next week,” he said. “Guess it’s going to be a pretty good show.”

“Oh, what bully fun!” cried Christopher. “We know a little circus girl,” and he told the story of Letty and the bear. Together they studied the bills as they passed, comparing notes as to their opinion of the different feats advertised and choosing which side-shows they would like best to see.

This amiable conversation occupied them all the rest of the drive.

Sunnycrest was a big white house on the top of a ridge. In front, except for a wide square of green lawn just before the house, the grounds sloped so steeply that terraces had been made every few yards, and at the bottom ran a delightful little brook. At the bottom of the hill were the farmhouse, barn, chicken and cow-houses and, where the brook curved and ran through a shallow, cemented basin, the spring-house and dairy. Behind the house was a big orchard and beyond stretched fields of grain and hay.

Christopher jumped down from the wagon almost before it stopped and rushed into the kitchen where Jane’s bobbed head could be seen, topped with a big pink bow. Huldah the cook was another old and very dear friend of the children’s.

“Hullo, Huldah. Got any ginger cakes?” shouted Christopher. “My stomach just aches for one of your spiced ginger cakes. Haven’t had one for two years, you know.”

“I’m afraid your stomach will ache still more before you are through,” mildly observed grandmother, who had followed him in.

But she did not forbid his eating the cakes, even though supper was almost ready. That is one of the privileges of growing old enough to be a grandmother.

The two horses had brought the carriage home at a much quicker rate than the heavily loaded wagon could travel and Jane had already explored the whole place in her quiet, energetic way. She had learned all the news regarding live stock new and old and had petted all her favorites. Dora the cat was specially friendly and Jane was convinced that the little animal remembered her from her former visit, two years before.

“I think that’s quite remarkable in a cat, don’t you, grandmother?” she said. “Now, if it was Juno, I shouldn’t be so surprised. Dogs always remember people. But with cats, it’s different.”

There were no kittens at present, but Huldah described past families with much detail. She had kept a written account of the color and name of each kitten and its fate. Most of the kittens had been given away or disposed of in their early infancy. Some, grown to cat-hood, disported themselves about the stables with a serene indifference to the house privileges of their mamma, and with a keen taste for rats—certainly not inherited from her. Dora was far too aristocratic to care for any food less appetizing than fresh milk and bits of cooked meat, cut into dainty morsels.

Juno had four new puppies, dear little fuzzy balls of fur; and there were two new calves—with such thin wabbly legs and big, scared eyes—in the barnyard. Six patiently setting hens promised dozens of fluffy chicks before long, and a brood of ducklings swam in the stable pond.

Jane had taken in all these marvels and her little brain was busy choosing names for the new puppies while grandmother washed her face and tidied her hair for supper.

She gave Christopher the news as they munched ginger cakes together. Jane had not thought to ask for the cakes but when they came she ate almost as many as Christopher.

“The pups are awfully cunning,” she said patronizingly. “And I know just where Juno keeps them. I’ll take you to see them in the morning.”

“Huh, I can find them myself. I’m going now. And I choose to name two of ’em.”

“They’re all named; every single one. And you can’t go to see them now, ’cause supper’s ready.”

“Who named them, I’d like to know? If you did it don’t count, ’cause it’s not fair to go and name all four, without asking me.”

“If you choose to go off with a strange boy, how can I ask you? Those pups are three weeks old and they just had to be named. They’re real nice names,” she added hastily, as Christopher made for the door. “They——”

“Kit, Kit,” called his grandmother, “go up-stairs and wash your hands. Supper is ready.”

“And waffles are no good when they have to stand,” added Huldah meaningly.

This hint was enough to send Christopher at a flying leap up the front stairs.

“I’ll show you the pups in the morning,” repeated Jane with exasperating calmness, following and watching his hasty ablutions from the bath-room door.

“Humph!” answered Christopher with ingratitude, as he splashed the water resentfully. “I guess I can find the pups easy enough—if I want to see ’em. And I know something you don’t know. A circus is coming to town next week, so there!”

“I did know it, but it’s not coming for two weeks. There’s a lovely horseback rider in it and grandfather said perhaps he’d take us,” replied Jane.

Then, carried away by the remembered charms of the circus posters, the twins linked arms and ran down to supper, their slight disagreement already forgotten.

Thus life settled down at Sunnycrest, happy and peaceful for the most part; always interesting but with now and then a little cloud of disappointment or regret overshadowing the sky of their sunny content—which, alas, is apt to be the way in life at every age.

Jane was rather sorry that Jo Perkins had come to work on the farm. He took Christopher away from her so often. To be sure there were a great many things that they could do all together; hunt for eggs, feed the chickens, milk the cows (for Jane and Christopher both learned to milk). But when Perk took Christopher fishing, Jane was not invited to go. Christopher soon developed into quite a sportsman, and begged his grandfather for a gun—Jane turned pale when she heard the request—to shoot some of the rabbits that ran so thick in the woods. But this grandfather positively refused to allow, nor would he permit Perk to carry a gun when Christopher was with him. So the two boys were obliged to content their sporting taste with fishing-rods and angleworms.

Whenever she thought about it, Jane felt surprised and a bit hurt at this ready abandonment of her by Christopher, but her own time was so filled up before long that at times she hardly missed him. Her little woman’s soul took as thriftily to household duties as the boy’s instinct turned to sport. Huldah found her nimble fingers of real use in shelling peas, beating eggs and sifting flour. Indeed, seldom had Huldah’s cake been so light, for in her zeal Jane sifted and resifted the flour and beat the eggs to such a stiffness that it seemed as if they would have to be broken up to stir into the batter, Huldah said.

But grandmother did not encourage indoor work to any great extent, and Jane spent many blissful hours in the orchard with her family of dolls, always in sight of either grandmother’s or Huldah’s watchful eye. For although the twins had reached the dignity of nine years, they were seldom left to their own devices for long at a time. Grandfather and grandmother felt their responsibility too strongly to take any risks, for had they not promised the anxious parents across the sea to take the best of care of these precious children?

Jane was a motherly little body and extended her care of the doll family to Juno’s family as well and Juno got into the habit of carrying the four fluffy balls of fur out to the orchard, where they all had merry romps, rolling about together in the sun and shade.

But even with these diversions Jane might have grown lonely at times during Christopher’s more frequent and longer absences with Perk and Bill Carpenter, a village boy, had not a new game been suggested to her by Mrs. Hartwell-Jones. Grandmother had called very promptly upon Mrs. Hartwell-Jones at her boarding-place in the village. The “lady who wrote books” had been so honestly disappointed that grandmother had not brought the children too that Mrs. Baker promised to return with them the very next day.

Jane was silent and a little awed, but Christopher was his usual cheerful, talkative self—with secret anticipations of another candy box. His hopes were not disappointed, for Mrs. Hartwell-Jones had planned for their visit and a regular “party” was spread forth, ice-cream, lady-fingers and chocolate drops all complete. Afterward she questioned them about what they did all day, every day.

“I milk the cows,” said Christopher boastfully.

“I can milk too,” interposed Jane.

“And I go off in the fields with Perk. When grandfather can spare him from the work we go fishing.”

“How splendid! And what do you do, Janey dear, when Kit is off with his rod?”

“Oh, I help Huldah make cake, and play in the orchard.”

“The orchard! What a fairy-land! May I play with you there some day when I come to Sunnycrest?”

“Oh, would you like to?” asked Jane with big eyes. “It would be splendid!”

“We shall have a fairies’ ball and you shall be queen.”

“Oh, oh! And the grape-vine swing will do for a throne. But perhaps you would rather be queen,” added Jane politely.

“No, I’ll be master of ceremonies.”

They had the game before many more days, and it opened up a new world to Jane who thereafter queened it royally in fairy-land, with the dolls for ladies of honor and the birds and butterflies her royal messengers. Her faith in the real fairies was firm and deep-rooted, the most ardent desire of her life being to see one. She never confided this hope to Christopher and the new game was kept for her lonely hours when Christopher was away with Jo Perkins or Bill Carpenter, with which latter boy his intimacy was growing.

[CHAPTER III—A SPRAINED ANKLE]

Mrs. Hartwell-Jones was a great walker and took many long, long tramps around the countryside. The villagers had got quite used to the spectacle of the white-haired lady clad in a short skirt of stout tweed and heavy laced boots. White hair is not always the accompaniment of trembling fingers, black silk gowns and knitting.

But her habit of taking lonely walks brought about an accident that might have been serious if it had not been for the twins’ love of exploring.

Branching off the main road that led from Sunnycrest to the village was a winding lane known as Birch Lane, which had a little story attached to it. The road had been built long ago by a very rich man as the avenue leading to his big country house. It was built below the level of the ground with grassy terraces sloping up on each side, along the base of which beautiful birch trees had been planted. But the rich man lost all his money and became too poor to build his house. The lane was left deserted and uncared-for, the graceful trees grew bent and gnarled and some of them died; the grass terraces slipped and caved in until they became only clay banks.

Jane and Christopher had often looked up the gloomy little roadway, now no more than a mere cow-path, and asked many questions concerning it. They both had a great longing to “explore” its depths, each for a different reason. Jane was sure that the fairies danced there and felt a breathless hope of one day catching them at it. Christopher, on the other hand, thought it not unlikely that a stray wolf or even a bear might be prowling around the tiny wilderness.

As the lane was only a mile distant from Sunnycrest, grandmother said they might go on a voyage of discovery—“only you go on voyages in a boat,” Christopher had corrected her—whenever Joshua could spare Jo Perkins to go with them. Jane rebelled at this, for she was sure the fairies would never appear before a great big boy of fourteen. But grandmother was firm on this point; so the trio started off one sunny afternoon, Jo Perkins carrying a basket containing quite a day’s provisions “in case they might get hungry before supper-time,” Huldah explained.

Christopher and Perk discussed fishing, rabbit-shooting and other manly topics while Jane skipped along in silence, her big eyes shining and her little mouth smiling at her thoughts.

“I shouldn’t be a single bit surprised to see some, even with Perk along,” she whispered to herself. “The books say they dance at night in the moonlight; but I am sure fairies must love the sunshine, it is so bright and goldy—just like themselves. And I should think they’d feel perfectly safe to dance in such an out-of-the-waysy place when most people are taking naps.”

The lane was very quiet and very beautiful. The sun shone down through the dancing leaves of the birch trees in flickering rays that might well have been the gleam of a fleeing fairy; the white tree trunks glimmered like pillars of silver. The silence was so great that to have it broken by the growl of a bear or, indeed, the snarl of a tiger, would not have been in the least astonishing or out of the way. But no such sound broke the summer stillness.

Indeed, it looked as if the children were to have the whole length of the deserted lane to themselves. They walked along the top of the bank, alert and watchful for any adventure, Christopher chattering as usual, Jane quiet and content.

“There ain’t much use in goin’ any farther,” said Jo Perkins at last. “There’s only one more turnin’, an’ that comes out into Pete Hull’s cow pasture. An’ this basket’s powerful heavy to lug so far. I say we help make it a bit lighter by disposin’ of some of the contents,” he added in a suggestive tone.

“Oh, Perk, please let us go just to the last turn, and then we’ll eat our lunch,” coaxed Jane.

So they walked on for another three minutes until a sudden sweep of the road showed them a broad space of golden sunshine and green grass. It was there that the poor rich man’s house was to have stood, tall and stately, with white columns and terraced gardens; alas, it was now only a pasture for cows.

The wide field with the cows lazily browsing gave the children a homely, comfortable sense of security. They felt that they had penetrated a mysterious wild and were back again in civilization. Jo Perkins had already begun to unpack the basket and Christopher was watching him with his soul—or more literally his stomach—in his eyes, when Jane’s attention was suddenly attracted by the flutter of something white down in the lane below them. She knelt on the edge of the bank and peered over, in breathless excitement. Was she to see a really-truly fairy at last?

What she did see surprised her so that she almost lost her balance and tumbled over the edge of the bank. Mrs. Hartwell-Jones was seated on the roots of an old birch tree, her back against the clay bank, the yellow clay of which clung to her jacket when she leaned forward to catch Jane’s eye. But she did not get up.

“Oh, you blessed child!” she called. “Never was I so thankful to see any one in the whole of my life! I have sprained my ankle and cannot move a step. The fairies must have sent you! I began to think I should have to sit here forever and forever.”

At once there was a grand excitement. The three children, basket and all, came tumbling down the bank to Mrs. Hartwell-Jones’s side, every one talking and suggesting aid at once. After the first moment of flurry Perk pocketed half a dozen doughnuts, to fortify him on the way, and bolted for home at top speed to fetch help. Jane and Christopher busied themselves in trying to make Mrs. Hartwell-Jones more comfortable. By leaning on Christopher’s stalwart little shoulder she managed to get upon one foot and move to a drier, sunnier spot where she sat upon Jane’s jacket and leaned against Christopher’s—which arrangement the twins insisted upon in spite of her protests.

“For you see you might get inflammation or something dreadful if you catch cold in your hurt foot,” Jane explained in her most motherly manner.

To beguile the time of waiting for Jo Perkins’s return they lunched out of Huldah’s generous basket and Mrs. Hartwell-Jones explained every detail of her accident, in answer to Christopher’s rapid questions, trying to identify for his satisfaction the exact root which had twisted her foot, and even what she had been thinking about not to have noticed the rough place. Jane listened with interest and sympathy but she said nothing. Mrs. Hartwell-Jones’s impulsive words: “I believe the fairies must have sent you” still rang in her ears. Had the fairies guided her to that last turn? She shuddered as she thought that if Jo Perkins had had his way they would have stopped short of that final bend and then perhaps Mrs. Hartwell-Jones would have had to sit on and on through the chilly evening and perhaps the night. Blessed fairies!

“If Letty had been with us to-day, she would have helped me watch for the fairies,” she broke out suddenly.

“Did Letty believe in fairies?”

“Yes, she told me so. She said she loved fairy stories. I wish——” Jane paused and her eyes grew wistful. “I wish Letty hadn’t had to go off in such a hurry the other day. She looked so sad. You know her mother died and she told me on the train platform that day that her brother had died too. I don’t believe she has anybody now. And she didn’t even have time to tell me where she was going.”

“Oh, she’ll turn up again; people always do,” declared Christopher cheerfully. “I don’t see why you need be so sorry for Letty. It must be jolly fun, belonging to a circus.”

“I wonder if she still has Punch and Judy. They were such cunning ponies, Mrs. Hartwell-Jones.”

“I see that a circus is to visit Hammersmith before very long,” replied Mrs. Hartwell-Jones. “Do you suppose it could possibly be the one to which your little friend belongs?”

“Oh, I wonder if it is! I hadn’t thought of that!” exclaimed Jane in great excitement. “Oh, I wish—I hope it will be!”

When the carriage arrived—the big family carryall it was, with Joshua driving, grandmother was in it. She would not hear of Mrs. Hartwell-Jones’s taking the long, jolty drive to the village. She was to come directly to Sunnycrest and there be nursed and cared for until her foot was well again. By the most wonderful good luck Dr. Greene had driven past the gate of Sunnycrest just as Jo Perkins delivered his message, had been hailed, brought back and was at that moment waiting to see the patient.

Joshua assisted Mrs. Hartwell-Jones carefully into the carriage, the children tucked themselves and the hamper in, and they drove rapidly away from the deserted lane, looking more mysterious than ever under the lengthening shadows of the afternoon sun; left it to the bees and the rabbits and—perhaps—to the fairies. Who knows?

[CHAPTER IV—GREEN APPLES]

“I have a piece of good news,” announced grandfather one afternoon a few days later, as he came up on the front veranda. He had driven into the village directly after the noon-day dinner and had just returned. “Where is your grandmother?”

Then he stopped short and eyed the children keenly. They were each sitting in a big chair, in attitudes too much doubled up for mere cozy comfort, and they were neither of them talking—a fact sufficient in itself to make one suspect that everything was not just as it should be. They sprang up with assumed spryness at sound of grandfather’s voice.

“What’s the news? Tell us!” cried Christopher.

“Yes, do, please,” echoed Jane.

Grandfather thought they looked pale.

“Where is your grandmother?” he repeated.

“She is sitting with Mrs. Hartwell-Jones. Mrs. Hartwell-Jones has a headache.”

“Hum. And what have you two been doing, without any one to look after you?”

“Playing, sir.”

“Playing where?”

A spasm crossed Jane’s face. She swallowed hard and began to talk very fast.

“We’ve just been playing out in the orchard with my dolls—where I play most every afternoon, grandfather. Juno brings her pups out there and——” She swallowed hard again.

Christopher collapsed suddenly into the nearest chair and bent double with a howl of pain. Jane began to cry.

“Playing in the orchard,” repeated grandfather gravely, looking at them each in turn. “Oh, why didn’t I have Perk stay in from the fields to look after you! Kit, how many green apples did you eat?”

“I don’t exactly know, sir,” came a small voice from the depths of a big chair. “I lost count after the eighth but it wasn’t many more.”

“More than eight!”

It was grandfather’s turn to drop into a chair. The chair was not very near so that he almost dropped on to the floor. But the twins were too miserable to laugh.

“They weren’t very big,” moaned Christopher.

“That made them all the greener,” replied his grandfather grimly.

“I only ate six, grandfather,” put in Jane consolingly. “I felt as if I’d had enough after three, but I couldn’t stop there, you know.”

In spite of his anxiety grandfather laughed. Then he got up to go in search of grandmother. She appeared in the doorway just then, looking very comfortable and cool in a fresh white dress.

“Mrs. Hartwell-Jones’s head is better, children, and she would like to see you up in her——” she began and stopped short.

“What is the matter with the children?” she cried, looking at them in great alarm.

“Jane ate six green apples and Kit lost count after the eighth. Is there anybody handy to send for the doctor?”

Grandmother looked dismayed, but faced the situation bravely.

“A drink of hot peppermint water will fix them, I think,” she said. “And if that doesn’t castor oil will. Dr. Greene has been called to Westside to take charge of a typhoid fever case and won’t be back to-night.”

After the children had been put to bed with warm, soothing drinks, and had had hot milk toast for supper, sitting up in bed with their wrappers on to eat it, Christopher suddenly bethought himself of grandfather’s good news.

“He never told us what it was!” he wailed to Jane.

“I wonder how he guessed about the apples so soon?” speculated Jane in reply. “I’ve played in the orchard ’most every day. I guess it was because you were playing with me.”

“Mean-y! Trying to put the blame on me! It was because you looked so queer and yellow, like biscuit dough.”

“I didn’t look any yellower than you. And I didn’t double up and howl, so there,” retorted Jane, indignantly.

Christopher was silenced for a moment by this home-thrust. Then he called triumphantly:

“I had a right to look yellower than you, ’cause I ate more apples. And I think I know what the good news is. The circus is comin’ day after to-morrow. I heard grandfather tell Mrs. Hartwell-Jones so.”

“Oh, Kit, how fine! Wouldn’t you just love to go?”

“We are going. Grandfather said we might when I first asked him.”

“Yes, I know, but perhaps he’ll change his mind now and not let us go, to punish us for being naughty about the apples.”

“But he promised! He’ll have to keep his word.”

“He didn’t really promise. He just said he’d see.”

“Well, that means the same. He meant yes.”

“Then I wonder what he will do to punish us?”

“Nothing. He’ll forgive us. Grandfathers are different from fathers about that.”

“But we’ve been naughty and deserve to be punished.”

“Well, isn’t it punishment enough, I’d like to know, to be put to bed in broad daylight?” demanded Christopher, tossing impatiently.

Just then Huldah came up for the milk toast bowls. She stood in the doorway between the children’s rooms and shook her head slowly as she looked from one bed to the other.

“I’m disapp’inted in you,” she said coldly.

“Oh, come now, Huldah, don’t rub it in,” pleaded Christopher.

“And we are as sorry as we can be,” added Jane.

“Well, you’ll lose some good apple pies by it,” remarked Huldah severely, picking up her tray. “Your grandfather was planning to have a picnic on circus day, an’ I was makin’ out to bake some apple pies for it—pies with lots of cinnamon—but apples’ll be scarce now, and we’ll have to be savin’ of ’em.”

“Oh, Huldah, we didn’t eat as many as that!” cried Jane, her pain coming back at the very idea.

“You must have eat ’most half a bushel between you.”

“My! Well, can’t you begin to be saving of them a little later in the summer, when there’s other things to make pie out of?” wheedled Christopher.

But Huldah shook her head and went away to her kitchen.

Jane lay thinking, soberly. She still felt weak and shaken after the sharp pain she had suffered, and found her bed very comfortable. Therefore she could not regard being put to bed so early as a punishment. Neither did she think it right that naughty children should go without punishment of some kind. It was not natural. It had never happened in any of her story-books, nor had it occurred in her own small experience, notwithstanding Christopher’s ideas about forgiving grandfathers. It stood to reason then that she and Christopher, having been naughty, must be punished. The most obvious punishment would be to keep them home from the circus. Grandfather had not actually promised to take them—nothing so solemn as “honest Injun” or “Cross my heart.” So perhaps he would not think he was breaking his word by keeping them at home.

Perhaps, if she and Christopher did something to show how sorry they were, deprived themselves of something, grandfather would think that was punishment enough. Soon the idea came to her.

“Kit,” she called, sitting up in bed, “are you asleep?”

“No, what you want?”

“Why, I think we ought—it seems to me—Huldah said we ate ’most half a bushel of apples, Kit. That’s an awful lot.”

“It’s not so many when you think of all there are left on the trees. It’s rubbish about Huldah’s having to save ’em. I know better ’n that. She just said that to make us uncomfortable, the mean thing.”

“Well, it was a lot, anyhow, and I think we ought to give ’em back.”

“Give ’em back! How could we? What do you mean?”

Christopher tumbled out of bed, his curiosity roused and coming in, huddled himself up on the foot of Jane’s cot.

“Why, don’t you think that your ’lowance an’ mine together ’d buy half a bushel of apples?” asked Jane eagerly, quite carried away by her heroic resolve.

“But I want my ’lowance to buy lemonade and peanuts with at the circus.”

“But maybe we can’t go to the circus.”

“Yes, we can. Grandfather promised.”

“No, he didn’t promise. He said ‘I’ll see.’ And now I guess he’ll keep us home, ’less we do something to show him we’re sorry. If we buy half a bushel of apples and give ’em to him in place of all those we ate, why, don’t you see? Maybe he’ll think that, and the stomach ache we’ve had, ’ll be punishment enough, without giving up the circus.”

“The stomach ache was enough punishment for me. I promised him I’d never eat any more green apples, and I won’t. But I want money to spend for lemonade at the circus.”

“I guess I like lemonade as well as you do, greedy, but I’d rather go to the circus without having it, than to miss the whole thing.”

“Well, so would I, silly. But do you honestly think grandfather would be so mean?”

“It wouldn’t be mean. It would be only fair,” declared Jane stoutly.

“Well, we’ll see about it in the morning,” answered Christopher, scuttling back to bed.

And that was all that Jane could get out of him, so that she went to sleep with her conscience only half clear. Because of course her fifteen cents would not do any good without Christopher’s. She knew enough about the prices of things to be sure of that.

Grandfather and grandmother were so cold and formal at breakfast the next morning, and avoided all mention of the circus so carefully that Christopher was forced to decide that for once Jane was right and they would better buy the half bushel of apples to show their repentance. They longed to consult Mrs. Hartwell-Jones, but that would mean telling the whole story, which they did not wish to do. Of course they did not know that “the lady who wrote books” had already heard the story from grandmother and had laughed over it until she cried.

After breakfast they held a hurried counsel and then ran out to the barn to find out who was going to the village that day. It turned out that Joshua himself was going, to have one of the horses shod. At first he refused to take the twins with him, saying that they were in disgrace and must remain quietly at home. It was only after they had explained their errand (under the most binding promises of secrecy) that he consented.

The ride into the village was interesting at all times, and now the whole countryside, ablaze with red and yellow circus posters, made driving between the decorated rail-fences most entertaining and lively. Joshua stopped in front of each pictorial long enough for the children to spell out the account of the wonders foretold and admire the gorgeous pictures, and then took away most of the charm by saying regretfully, each time they drove on:

“Just to think, you young ’uns might have seen all them things—if you hadn’t stole an’ eat up your gran’pa’s apples.”

“Suppose it should be Letty’s circus!” exclaimed Jane. “See, Kit, in that picture over there there are Shetland ponies. Oh, Kit, just suppose it should be!”