The Daughters of the Little Grey House

THE DAUGHTERS OF
THE LITTLE GREY HOUSE

BY

MARION AMES TAGGART

AUTHOR OF THE LITTLE GREY HOUSE

NEW YORK
THE McCLURE COMPANY
MCMVII

Copyright, 1907, by The McClure Company
Published, October, 1907

To

My Cousin

Ella T. Johnson, with love

CONTENTS

[DAUGHTERS OF LITTLE GREY HOUSE ]

[CHAPTER ONE]

ITS INMATES

"How do you know when you're a young lady?" asked Roberta Grey.

She was sitting before the ancient mahogany dressing-table in her—and Wythie's—room, unblushingly regarding herself in the mirror, while the fingers of both hands, supporting her brilliant face, experimented with changes in it by pushing up the delicate eyebrows into quite a celestial angle.

Frances Silsby, from the rocking-chair by the window, and Wythie on the foot of the bed, laughed.

"I know I'm young by the record in the Bible—and by the way I feel," said Frances. "And I know I'm a lady by the company I keep, since 'birds of a feather,' and so forth." Frances made a deep salaam almost to the floor, taking advantage of the forward tilt of the rocking-chair to deepen it.

"That's the retort courteous, Francie. You will be an ornament to the diplomatic circle when you are Lady Ambassadress to the court of St. James'. But I should like to know how to be sure one's reluctant feet have crossed the meeting point of the brook and the river," insisted Rob.

"Lady Ambassadress, Rob?" hinted Oswyth. "You don't think that is tautological, do you? You know in 'Rudder Grange' they never noticed that Pomona had grown up until a young man walked home with her one night, and loitered at the gate; perhaps that's the test," added Wythie slyly. Bruce Rutherford had come down with Rob from Frances' the previous night alone, and not with Basil and Bartlemy to bear them company, as usual, hence Wythie's suggestion had a personal application.

"If one had to put on shoes and stockings, for instance, after she ceased to stand where the brook and river meet, she would know that she had waded in and had come out on the other side, a young lady," Rob went on with slightly heightened colour, ignoring her sister. "That's it; I have it!" she cried, wheeling around to look at her audience outside the glass. "It is something of the sort—it's the hair! I am just eighteen, but I wear my hair in a braid, with a big bow where it is turned up on the top of my head. If I discarded that bow, and made a great soft knot of hair 'on the top of my head, in the place where the wool ought to grow'"—Rob chanted this direct quotation—"I should be a young lady! I think I'll do it!"

She jumped up, snatched a kimono from a hook in the closet, threw it over her shoulders, dropped back into her chair before the dressing-table and in a twinkling had the pins out of her braid; the bow, badge of young girlhood, thrown on the table, and her rebellious, red-brown hair tumbling about her slender shoulders in a mass of beautiful colour.

"Wythie is already done up, and Frances, too. I have been wondering why they seemed so much more the real thing than I did, and I never discovered till now," said Rob, speaking with difficulty as she sat, head almost touching her lap, gathering her wealth of locks into her hand. "Now, I am going to take my place among my peers," she added, righting herself, displaying crimson cheeks as she faced the glass, and twisting and coaxing her hair to the crown of her head. "You shall see me in my true dignity henceforth. Won't it be pathetic, when the fashion-books come and Mardy has no longer any interest in those charming pages headed: Styles for Young Girls? Thank goodness, there is Prue still, but even she is sixteen, and that means her hours are numbered. I didn't want to grow up, and I mean to italicize the young in my title of young lady just as long as I can, but I think I'm grown up. There, will that do?"

Rob arose as she spoke and faced her sister and her friend. She was tall, slender, radiant with nervous energy and quick wit; pretty, yet charming more than pretty. The sort of girl that she had promised to be; one who would carry everything before her with her high courage, high standards, and her flashing charm of variety in colouring and expression. Wythie was the same Wythie that she had been always; pretty, womanly, gentle, sweet, with goodness, pure, simple, unadulterated goodness, shining from her steady eyes and smiling lips. Frances Silsby had not changed much. She, too, was pretty in an unobtrusive way, and had grown more so in growing older. "She was a girl," Bruce Rutherford said, "whom one would endorse or cash at sight," and she deserved the trust that she inspired. But Rob swept everything before her; no one ever stopped to criticise nor analyse Rob. She flashed on the scene, and instantly every eye was filled with the variable charm of her face, which defied regular laws of beauty. Every heart went out to the warmth of her magnetic presence and kindliness of nature; while no one could be sceptic enough to doubt her crystal purity of purpose and truth.

Oswyth loved her with adoring love, and Frances regarded her as the embodiment of all her ideals, just as she had regarded her from her first meeting with Rob at the great age of three.

In the fifteen months that had passed since Rob's resolution had prevented the sacrifice of her beloved "Patergrey's" legacy to his family, and had secured for the Greys the full value of the patent into which he had poured the best effort of years of his pathetic life, both Oswyth and Rob had blossomed into girls of nineteen, and eighteen respectively, and into a fulness of life and happiness such as they could never have attained but that the stress and strain of anxiety and even want, had thus been removed. They were not wealthy people, by any means, these blithe and busy Greys, but they possessed, now, what seemed contrastingly like wealth to them, and which was quite enough to satisfy the true standards and tastes which their noble mother had given them. And the little grey house, which had always seemed rather like one of themselves than a mere house, had blossomed with its daughters into fuller adornment and cheerfulness during this year and a quarter. Many pretty modern things had crept in to take their places among the riches of inherited mahogany, pewter and china which were the little grey house's glory and pride.

"Well, you don't say anything! Don't you like me in my new rôle of full blown young lady, sans braid, sans bow, sans everything that fettered me in the bud?" demanded Rob, as Frances and Wythie gazed at her without speaking.

"You are lovely, Robin dear," said Wythie, "but somehow it makes me feel a little sorry to see the familiar bow discarded, and your hair done up with a full grown do! I am so used to my young girl sister!"

"You have preceded me a-down the knotty way, Wythie," said Rob. "See what dreadful puns you force me to in order to cheer you when you become pensive! Your hair has been knotted and twisted up for a year. You preceded me into the world by a twelvemonth, and dutifully I follow you, one year in retard, in the matter of full-grown hair-dressing. Isn't it all right, Francie?"

"The rightest kind of right, Rob," said Frances emphatically. "You are eighteen, and it is time you came into your kingdom—besides, it is most becoming! I only wish I could make my hair puff and lie up loose like that."

For Frances' hair was of that fine, yet determined kind which is no more capable of trifling with life than were the Puritan ancestors from whom it was derived.

"There is no power on earth could make mine lie down smooth and decorous like yours," retorted Rob, surveying with half approval, half disfavour her hair which, like her face, was as full of ripples and curves as ever. "Then, on the whole, the sentiment of the meeting is in favour of the new departure. Girls, you have been singularly fortunate! You have seen the larva turn into the butterfly—and you didn't have to stand a glass over me either! I am now, Roberta Grey, spinster, and I will fold up my hair-bow and present it to Prudence to have and to hold, and to use until her hour of eighteen sounds."

"Here she comes now, with your mother," announced Frances from her seat by the window.

"They went up to Aunt Azraella's, and then Mardy was going to Cousin Charlotte's, while Prue went to the post-office. They were to meet at Cousin Charlotte's, and come home together. I hope Mardy isn't tired," said Wythie, untwining herself from her Turkish position on the foot of the bed, and running to look over Frances' shoulder and to wave her hand at the beloved mother and Prudence.

Prue ran up-stairs; the girls heard Mrs. Grey going through the house to find Lydia in the kitchen. Accustomed as she was to seeing Prue, Frances felt anew, as she always did each time that she saw her, the startling quality of the youngest Grey girl's great beauty. During the past year Prue had grown amazingly, and had shot up into a slender creature that topped by nearly a head Rob, who had seemed fairly tall until Prue accomplished this feat. Her complexion was white with not a hint of colour, unless it was brought there by her emotions, or whipped into her cheeks by the breeze. Her features were faultlessly regular; her hair bright gold, silky and abundant, flying like floss around her low white brow. Her lips relieved the pallor of her face by their warm crimson, and from under the golden crown of hair, which the tall young creature wore proudly, there looked out a pair of large dark brown eyes that startled one by their contrast with their surroundings. There was no question that Prue was not only the beauty of the family, but that she had grown into a beauty of a rare type and of a very high rank. Unfortunately, she was conscious of her effect, although she was hardly to blame for this, since every one, except her wise mother and sisters, flattered her. It was a lucky thing for Prue that Wythie's sweetness and Rob's charm surpassed in the long run the attraction of Prue's dazzling beauty; for, otherwise, she might have forgotten altogether that beauty is by no means the only gift that the good fairies can bestow at a christening.

"I thought I should find you here, Frances. Here is a letter for you, Rob, but there was no other. I saw Battalion B down by the post-office; I thought they went back this morning," said Prue, dropping a letter in Rob's lap, and laying her hat on her knee as she seated herself beside Wythie and picked out the edges of its bows.

"No; Basil said he had to meet Mr. Dinsmore—they are having some trouble with their landlord, and Basil said if they couldn't get it straightened up they would buy the Caldwell place. It isn't really their landlord, but his agent that bothers them," said Wythie, trying to mention Basil Rutherford's name in the same old, easy, unconscious way she had used it when Battalion B and the Grey girls had first become friends. "And Bruce wanted to see Dr. Fairbairn, so they all waited to go back to New Haven this afternoon—of course Bartlemy waited to go with Basil and Bruce."

"Basil and Bruce both said that they would buy the Caldwell place rather than leave Fayre," smiled Frances, and Wythie blushed; but Rob was deep in her letter and did not heed. "Do you know, Wythie, I don't believe we realize what a lot of money those boys must have?" Frances continued. "You know they never say anything directly, but here they are, all three of them in Yale, keeping this place here, and having every wish gratified—all this means wealth, Oswyth, my dear. You know papa is called the richest man in Fayre, but he says Commodore Rutherford must have a great deal more than he has, for his boys to do all this. They are so nice and simple that somehow they seem to have the effect of being quite poor, but they are far from that."

"It doesn't make people simple to be poor, Francie; it makes them self-conscious and generally horrid. I have so recently escaped the throes of dire poverty, you know, that I speak by the book. The reason Battalion B are such nice, straightforward boys is that they don't have to think of money at all, and that—"

"That they are upright, straightforward, honest boys, well-bred, and all 'round fine," said Mrs. Grey, entering and interrupting Rob. "What nonsense you do talk, Robin, you chatterbox! I think Wren would be a better name for you than Robin! As though money made people or unmade them, by its possession or lack! Qualities are intrinsic, as you know quite well, my dear. The boys are gentlemen, in the true sense of that abused old word, and would be such were they kings or beggars. Whom is your letter from; isn't it Hester Baldwin?"

"Yes, Mardy," said Rob meekly. "Please don't call me Wren; it doesn't sound lofty and dignified, somehow. Don't you see that I've done my hair up in what Wythie called 'a grown-up do'? I'd hate to be called Wren with my hair done up—it's such an abbreviated bird!"

"Rob, you are so very silly!" smiled Mrs. Grey reproachfully. "Your hair looks well, dear, but must I lose the last vestige of my little Rob?"

"Yes, Mardy; she is gone but not forgotten. Prue, here before these witnesses, I give you my last-worn hair-bow, and these, and these," said Rob, hastily rummaging in her drawer and producing several big, soft ribbon bows which she tossed into Prue's lap.

"Much obliged," said Prue, beginning to fold her acquisitions. "I think that I shall give up hair ribbons before I am eighteen; whom will mine descend to?"

"There are always little girls, Prudy, though they may not be little Grey ones," said Rob wisely. "Your ribbons will probably go to little Polly Flinders. How did you find our relatives, Mardy? Is Aunt Azraella still herself, and is dear Cousin Peace well?"

"Aunt Azraella has a cold, Rob; it isn't serious, but she is nursing it. I think it would be as well if you and Wythie would go up there after tea. And Charlotte looked tired. I fear it is too much for her to go on keeping house there, now that she is alone. The dear soul clings to her life-long home, but without some one besides Annie to look after her it seems to me unsafe for her to live there," said Mrs. Grey, looking anxious. "Why, what did Hester say, Rob? I forgot to ask you?"

"And you may well ask!" cried Rob, springing to her feet. "How could I forget to tell you? She says that she wants to bring her favourite cousin here to-morrow, and that if she doesn't hear from us to the contrary she will assume that it is all right to do so, and come."

"Her cousin? What cousin is it? Does she mean to stay with us, or merely to call? asked Mrs. Grey with a quick mental outlook over the domestic conditions for guests.

"To lunch only," said Rob, looking over her letter. "The cousin is that Lester Baldwin of whom she has talked so much. He is named after her father, with the John dropped. He is young—twenty something—and has been in Japan for three years. Hester thinks there never was such a boy. When we wave our Battalion B in her face and she praises them, you can see her reserving her opinion of Lester. We shall let them come, Mardy?"

"Oh, yes, of course," said that motherly woman. "It is curious, but with all her advantages I feel as though I must do everything I can to make Hester happy."

"She just escaped being morbid," said Wythie rising. "Frances, you will excuse me if I leave you to Rob and baby Prue, and go to look over the pantry? There is time for one of us to go down again with orders if there is anything that we must have for the lunch to-morrow. Suppose I go down with orders, and stop at Aunt Azraella's, Mardy? Then Rob won't have to go."

"You forget that I am now the favourite niece, Wythie dear," said Rob. "But go if you will, and try to usurp that proud position; I will never upbraid you."

Wythie smiled her quiet smile and left the room. Just beyond the door she met with Kiku-san, grown into a mountain of a cat, but more clingingly kittenfied and dependent than ever. Wythie swung him to her shoulder just as she had always done since he had come to them, a white down-ball with pink trimmings, and continued her way to the kitchen to interview Lydia.

Lydia was the young woman who had come to preside over that department when the sale of the bricquette machine patent had made it possible for the Greys to have some one to help them in the tiresome routine of housework.

"Help" was what Lydia was, in the old-fashioned sense of the word, used as a particularly proper—and personal—noun. She was a most staid and respectable young woman of native stock antedating Revolutionary days. She could not have been more than half-way through her second decade of years, but she seemed removed by eons from anything approaching to youthful pleasures, not to say follies.

She had scorned domestic service, having preferred attending Fayre's bake-shop, until she learned that the Greys were seeking "help"; then she offered herself for the position, which she had filled from that day to the present one. The Greys were immensely flattered by her preference for them over all their townsfolk until they discovered that Lydia had been willing to come to them because, as they had heretofore been doing their own housework unaided, "they wouldn't feel themselves better than she was." This humbled the Greys, but delighted their sense of humour, and from the date of this discovery they had, Rob said, "been vainly trying to feel themselves as good as Lydia." Thus Lydia was a character, in the possession of whom the merry Greys revelled, not less for her competent service than for her unconscious contributions to their mirth. She welcomed Wythie, and Kiku-san on Wythie's shoulder, with a solemn face raised from a small sheet which she was attentively reading.

"Don't you think you had ought to take the pledge, Wythie?" she demanded so unexpectedly that Wythie involuntarily glanced in the small mirror which hung convenient to Lydia's back door to see what there was in her appearance to warrant such a question.

"Why, no, Lyddie," she said rallying and with difficulty keeping her lips straight. "I can't say I have felt any special need of it. What made you ask that?"

"This paper," said Lydia, tapping the sheet she held as if Doom were wrapped in it. "I get it sent me from Maine; it's a warning. I think you had ought to take the pledge, you and Roberta and Prue, the whole of you. There's the Rutherford boys."

"Where?" cried Wythie, looking hastily out of the window, for the Rutherford boys were, she supposed, safely back at college by this time. "Oh, you mean we ought to take the pledge on the boys' account? Well, but you see, Lydia, we never give the boys wine, and they are perfectly safe, as far as I can see——"

"It's the example," said this serious young woman severely, "I'm a-going to sign. This paper has made me see I owe it to my conscience to Protest—" she spoke the word with a capital—"and Protect the weak from themselves. Was you going to get something?" she added, for Wythie beat a retreat to the pantry, hiding her face in Kiku-san's fur. Lydia frequently propounded moral questions to Wythie and Rob when they came upon her, or were working with her, but thus far they had not grown accustomed to these questions to the extent of meeting them with the gravity which their handmaid felt they deserved.

"No," came Wythie's voice huskily from the depths of the pantry. "No, Lyddie, I don't want anything, except to see what we have in the house toward a luncheon-party to-morrow. Hester Baldwin is coming out from New York, bringing a young man cousin of hers whom we have never seen, so I want them to have something particularly nice. I thought we would take account of stock and plan our lunch, and that I would go down to-night to order what we needed before tea. Then I shall be here all the morning to help you with some of the fancy things that take time."

"You might have lobster à la Newburg," said Lydia, folding her paper and abandoning the principles which it had just taught her with a speed that finished Wythie's hopes of gravity.

Her laugh rang out so infectiously that her mother, hearing it up-stairs, smiled in sympathy.

"Isn't that appropriate?" said Lydia, standing rigid in displeasure.

"We couldn't have anything better," cried Wythie emphatically. "That wasn't what I laughed at, Lyddie. And you make it so well that we are proud of your skill, aren't we?"

"That's what made me mention it," said Lydia innocently. And Wythie just succeeded in checking a second laugh.

But Lydia would never have guessed that Wythie laughed because the solemn girl beside her had lost sight of her principles and the wine in the lobster à la Newburg at one and the same moment, oblivious to all but her newly acquired skill in making the delectable dish. Lydia had long ago abandoned all hope of understanding at what Wythie and Rob Grey laughed so often. She had decided that it was usually mere light-mindedness.

[CHAPTER TWO]

ITS GUESTS

Rob walked up and down the platform of Fayre's small station waiting the train which was to bring her guests from New York to spend the day. It was a day that it seemed a pity to spend; it should have been laid by for the winter need of such weather, much as one would lay by a golden guinea against a dark day. And no guinea could have been more golden than this October day. The sunshine seemed to be filtered through its atmosphere till the very air was golden, and the trees sent their showers of yellow leaves down the shafts of sunshine in the brisk breeze, retaining more than they gave of their cloth-of-gold garments to brighten the quiet streets and illumine the hillsides.

Hester Baldwin had been a frequent visitor to Fayre since Rob's expedition to New York to save her father's patent had brought her into Hester's orbit.

An only child, with an inheritance of wealth on both sides, Hester lacked nothing in the way of opportunities, and had been introduced to society the previous winter, in which she had thus far found little to interest or attract her. She was a girl of considerable strength of character, with vaguely great aspirations; it was true that she had barely escaped being morbid. Thus far her vocation had not been revealed, and she moved dissatisfiedly through a life from which all outward reasons for dissatisfaction had been removed. Rob laughed at Hester, and told her that she was only a degree less serious than Lydia, but she sympathized with her none the less. Rob said in private that Hester had been misplaced; that she should have been the oldest daughter of a struggling family of sixteen members, for whom she would have been forced to exert herself into forgetfulness of her own soul, and her hair-splitting self-analysis. Rob herself had never had time to question, being early called upon to do without choice of action, and she did not underrate the advantages of her early disadvantages in forming her character and keeping her cheerful—though nature had more to do with the latter than Rob knew.

The more Hester came to Fayre the more she wanted not to leave it. Her father and mother—whom Rob had found perfect in those difficult rôles—were naturally wrapt up in this dear only daughter, but Hester revelled in the family life of the little grey house, and envied Rob her chum-sisters, thinking Rob richer in her simple home than was Hester Baldwin in her big house, with servants, society, and all the advantages of wealth which were hers alone, and which, being alone, she could not half enjoy.

Rob smiled to herself as she paced the platform, thinking how Hester's pale face was that moment lighting up with joy, for the train whistled around the bend, and in an instant would be in sight.

Hester, her cousin, an old woman, and the mail-bag were the only passengers for Fayre. The tall girl leaving the car would have been conspicuous, however, among many, and the young man, browned by Eastern suns, who followed her, not less so. Hester was as tall as Prue Grey. She had a keen, restless face, with hungry, eager grey eyes, and rather a melancholy droop to her well-cut lips. She was not a pretty girl, but she was distinguished looking, and would be fine looking at forty when many of her pretty contemporaries had become entirely commonplace. She was clad in that quiet elegance of material and style which is the perfection of taste, utterly unattainable except one has a purse long enough to pay for its expensive simplicity.

Rob realized that their modest competence would never let her look as Hester did that moment; she realized it anew every time she saw her friend again, but it troubled her no more than it troubles her namesake, the redbreast, that he is not clad like the oriole. For while Rob was too sensible to ignore the lesser things of life she was too light-heartedly happy to care for them greatly.

Hester sprang off the last step of the car, beyond the conductor's extended hand, and had Rob in her arms before her cousin could disentangle himself from the leisurely elderly passenger and her bag which had got between him and Hester when they were in the aisle, and now, by dismounting from the car sidewise, one step at a time, delayed him from following his cousin. At last he circumnavigated the old person's bulk and came forward, laughing, to be presented to Rob.

He looked so much like a younger edition of his uncle, John Lester Baldwin, two thirds of whose name he bore, that Rob gave him her friendship on the spot, and the three young people walked up the hill of Fayre's main street, talking gaily all the way to the little grey house.

"I asked Frances to luncheon, Lester," said Rob, as they turned in at the low gate.

"And this is the little grey house, is it?" asked Lester Baldwin at the same moment. "I have heard of it and dreamed of it in distant Japan."

"Just an every day, little colonial house; not worth dreaming of at the foot of Fusiyama, among the cherry blossoms and the chrysanthemums," smiled Rob. "But we love it dearly; it has been a little Grey house for five generations, including us, the present girls."

"Present girls?" laughed Lester Baldwin. "Or pleasant girls? And does that hint a future possibility; does it mean: Girls, at present?"

"It means: Present girls," said Rob accenting the last syllable as Wythie and Prue appeared in the doorway, thus turning her adjective into a verb. "Let me present you, Mr. Baldwin, to my sisters, Oswyth and Prudence. And our friend, Miss Frances Silsby," added Rob, as she espied Frances in the hall.

Now Kiku-san, hearing Rob's voice, had come towards the door to welcome her. Being abnormally timid, especially fearing men, he swiftly turned and started to flee back to the kitchen for safety as he unexpectedly caught a glimpse of Lester Baldwin, where he had counted on finding only Rob. At the same instant that the white cat flew back from the door, Frances advanced towards it. There was a fearful shriek of terror and pain from Kiku, who thought that the worst he had feared had happened as Frances came down upon his paw; a scream of terror from Frances, who had not time to realize what was wrong, and she was launched headlong at the stranger, Hester's travelled cousin, before whom she, naturally, wanted to appear at her best.

The stranger received the sudden charge with a gravity that at once established him high in the fun-loving Greys' good opinion. Steadying himself against the casement he caught Frances in time to save her from being dashed headforemost down the low steps, and helped her to regain her feet.

"Customs have changed in the States since I left home," Lester said quietly. "We exceed the hospitality of the East—there the arriving guests are never offered more than tea, water for their hands and, possibly, flowers."

All five girls burst into such a peal of laughter that old Mrs. Dinsmore, the lawyer's mother, passing on the opposite side of the street, laughed to herself till she had long passed the little grey house.

"That reception was caused by the one Japanese member of our family," said Wythie. "Our white cat, Kiku-san, being timid, retreated from your presence and upset Frances."

"Kiku—chrysanthemum?" suggested Lester Baldwin. "Nice name for a white cat, but I was not prepared to find you speaking Japanese here."

"We have spoken all we know of it in naming Kiku. Won't you walk into our parlour? We are not spiders," said Rob. "Prudy, please tell Mardy we are come."

Prue disappeared, and the others entered the beautiful parlour of the little grey house. For it was a beautiful room with its extreme simplicity of green walls and high white wainscoting, its splendid old mahogany, fine pictures, books, and with the logs burning on the hearth, which the October wind made it just cool enough indoors to warrant.

Lester Baldwin threw himself into a hospitable chair with a long breath of appreciation. "I see why Uncle John said they had hard work to keep you at home, Hessie, and why you never dream of living in marble halls, but rather in a little grey house."

"Don't you?" said Hester, pulling out the fingers of her gloves, as she stood with one foot extended towards the warmth of the fire for the mere luxury of it, and not because she was in the least cold. "And you don't know it all yet."

"My cousin doesn't mean that for slang, Miss Roberta," said Lester Baldwin.

"Thanks," remarked Rob. "We love to have people like our house. There is something in the dear little old thing that I can't get anywhere else—Maybe it's my own love for it," she added.

"No, it's quality," said young Baldwin. "It has an atmosphere that is quite indescribable that is partly the result of your love for it, no doubt, but it is also the very delightful architecture of the house, its simplicity and harmony, and its venerableness. An artist would envy you it, Miss Roberta."

"Oh, I forgot for the moment that you were an architect," cried Rob, beaming gratefully upon him.

Lydia might be solemn, but she made everybody else light-hearted on such occasions as this. Mrs. Grey emerged from the kitchen to greet her young guests, looking flushed, but peaceful. She and Wythie had been helping Lydia all the morning, and the result was a luncheon that satisfied her housewifely soul.

It was a merry luncheon, too, and Lydia served it with a face so saddened by the constant laughter ringing around the table that Wythie and Rob telegraphed to each other their appreciation of its contrasting expression.

After luncheon Wythie, Frances, and Prue took Lester Baldwin to see the beauties of Fayre, which were well worth seeing; its lovely, quiet river; its great elms, and dignified mansions. Hester begged them to let her stay at home and keep Rob with her, and she bore Rob off at once, when she had obtained her way, for a long, confidential talk in the room which her friend shared with Wythie.

"Well, Hester, what is it this time?" asked Rob, when they had established themselves opposite to each other, one in a small, the other in a large rocking-chair, and were rocking for dear life at that cosey pace which seems at once to pursue and keep up with confidences. Rob's eyes wandered a trifle longingly out of the window at the perfect weather; though she was fond of Hester and interested in all that she could have to tell her, she, too, would have found the walk which the rest were enjoying pleasant had Hester been thus minded.

"Is it Chinese-missionarying, adopting a baby, teaching new Italian citizens, or what, Hester?" she continued. Hester had been full of each of these projects at various times.

Hester sat up straight in the energy of her reply. "Everything is beginning, Rob," she cried, "and I can't stand it!"

"It does sound rather awful, though vague," retorted Rob, settling herself back in her chair as Hester grew rigid, and moving her head about until her hair got comfortably loose, and fitted over the chair top.

"Ah, you know what I mean!" said Hester reproachfully in her alto voice, which was her greatest charm. "Invitations, and teas, and all those things! If I let myself drift into it all it takes every bit of my time—strength too—and I shall never amount to one thing."

"Well, I suppose it's true that it will take all your time, but I don't see that the rest of your proposition follows," said Rob sensibly. "Your mother keeps up her social duties, and, except—loyally excepting, you know—Mardy-mine, I don't know any woman who amounts to much more. Amounting to something doesn't depend on circumstances, but conquers them. We've gone over this ground a good many times already, Hessie, and, really, what's the use?"

"My mother married, and her duty is to do exactly what she does," said Hester. "She is a great help to father, entertaining his business acquaintances, and furthering all his interests. But I am not helping any one when I go butterflying about, and it is for me to choose now what sort of a woman I will be."

"I suppose I can't enter into this tremendous earnestness of yours as I ought," sighed Rob. "It seems to me that we both have only to lead good, kind, sweet tempered lives, and be ready for our work when it comes. I think a vocation ought to mean being called, and not calling—with a megaphone, too—to all sorts of distant duties to come and switch us off our track. We are young, Hester."

"Eighteen; quite old enough to find ourselves, Rob," said Hester.

"Yes, and I'm wearing my hair in full blown young-lady fashion; my bow is gone—did you notice, Hester?" said Rob, refusing to rise to Hester's heights. "But for mercy's sake, Hessie dear, don't adopt soulful slang! I've heard seven separate women, one lecturer and six private—geese?—talk about 'finding ourselves' lately! There's something in set soulful phrases that affects my stout nerves."

"Yes," assented Hester with entire sympathy. "I didn't know I said it; those things are so catching! You see, Rob, you wouldn't care for a society life, any more than I do! It is full of catch phrases and catch ways."

"Hessie, Hessie, what are you trying to get at?" cried Rob. "You know I have as much desire for a society life as there is prospect of my leading one! But I don't see why you can't 'just be happy'; wasn't that the burden of one of James Whitcomb Riley's poems? Why can't you dance and play, and be eighteen, only, with all your might, and let the future take care of itself? I declare you are very like our Lydia! She convulsed Wythie last night by suddenly demanding, when poor Wythiekins came into the kitchen, if she didn't think she ought to take the pledge! Wythie felt satisfied with her naturally temperate tendencies, but Lydia thought she should sign as an example, chiefly to the Rutherfords, who are sobriety itself! Don't you think you magnify your office more as Lyddie does than as St. Paul did?"

Hester laughed. "I think one ought to make up one's mind definitely to something," she insisted. "Rob, truthfully, do you think you would like to marry?"

Rob laughed long and merrily. "Not this afternoon," she cried. "I'll let you know if I feel differently to-morrow."

"No, but don't you think if a girl knows positively that she will never marry, and nothing can change her mind, that she ought to act differently from a girl who is willing to entertain the thought?"

Rob laughed again. "I notice the thought entertains most girls," she said. "We have spoken on this tremendous subject also, Hessie. It never occurs to me to make up my mind for good and for all about anything. I have lived only eighteen years, but I have changed my tastes lots of times, for food, for people, for amusements—for lots of things. I don't know how I shall feel at twenty, much more at five and twenty. I'm perfectly happy, and I'm not over the border of little girlhood—I wish I could romp and play dolls without shocking people. And I've had a hard fight, and tasted care and even sorrow, so it seems to be almost wrong to go on twisting and distorting these lovely young days the way you do, Hessie dear. You haven't told me what it is that has set you out this time, however?"

"It is something I saw the other day," said Hester sadly. "I wish I could be sunny and light-hearted like you."

"The reason of the difference is partly in our temperaments, but it is a good deal because I had to be happy in self-defence from the trials that began early for me," said Rob, with the keen wisdom that underlay her merry ways. "You had your path made smooth; I had to be jolly to keep up myself and the others. If you had worked as I did with a frail, sensitive, beloved father, and had seen your brave mother trying to win a fight where the odds against her were too heavy to count, you'd have learned what virtue lay in a laugh. I don't mean to preach, Hester, but you ought to be satisfied to love and to be loved, and wait your life's meaning cheerfully. But what did you see?"

"Father had to go to a tenement district to look over some property there which a client talked of buying," said Hester. "I begged to be taken with him, and, though he objected, saying I was sober enough without seeing misery, he let me have my way—as he usually does, the dear, kind father! I saw, Robin, a cripple boy that was heartrending. I never, never shall forget him, nor get over the feeling that I have no right to my comforts while there is such as he. No; don't interrupt. I know all that reason can tell me on that head, because father talked to me, and he is not merely just—though that's the highest sort of kindness—but he is tenderly kind as well, we both know that. But the feeling remains after I have reasoned and reasoned. Then, after that poor, poor child, I saw others, crippled, maimed, and all incurable. What can be done with them, except leave them in the slums, to be maimed in mind as well as in body?"

Hester stopped, her eyes overflowing. Rob put out her hand with a responsive moisture in her own bright eyes.

"Dear Hessie, I beg your pardon. I suppose our point of view is different, and very likely I am wrong, and you are right in taking life so hard," she said.

"No, Rob; but you have your work in your family, which needs you, while I am free, and I can't help thinking I ought to find mine. Such sights make me sure that having money, I have no right to use it for teas, receptions, dancing gowns—all that sort of thing," said Hester earnestly.

"While we Greys, though we are freed from all our old worries, have only enough income to live plainly, and help one another," added Rob, finishing the thought Hester felt afraid to voice. "Then, here in Fayre there is no such misery as you see in town, and when I go in to visit you I see only New York's splendour. Go on, Hester; what have you in mind?"

Hester flushed, and rose. "I don't know precisely, and I see the others, coming back, so I can't talk my thoughts into shape with you as I meant to. It will have to wait. But I know one thing: I can not possibly rest till I find out exactly what it is that is in my mind. Isn't Lester fine; don't you like him?"

"How can I help it, when he is so like his uncle?" retorted Rob. "There is no other man in the world equal to your father, Hester, or whom I love so much."

"Not Battalion B?" suggested Hester, fearing to narrow her question to one member of that battalion.

"Battalion B are boys," retorted Rob. "Your cousin seems to find our Prudy beautiful."

"Lester is an artist," said Hester. "Prue is the handsomest girl I ever saw, but she isn't Roberta." And Hester twined an admiring and loving embrace of both eyes and arms around the friend in whose mobile face she found a beauty more entrancing than Prue's.

"We must go down, Hester dear," said Rob, patting the arm under her right hand. She had grown quiet since Hester had told her of the sad children, and the deep womanliness which lay hidden in her merry girl-heart, and which had grown deeper and more apparent since her father's death, softened the sparkling face into a most becoming gravity. "Perhaps something can be done, Hester. Perhaps something good may come, and through you, to the poor mite whom you saw! And perhaps, after all, your discontent is that 'divine discontent,' which makes the world better."

Hester smiled gladly; it was a comfort to feel that Rob did not think her ridiculous.

The Greys' guests departed after an early tea to which they were easily persuaded to remain. All three Grey girls saw them off on the edge of the October twilight, and came home under Fayre's elms and the young moon, discussing Hester's newly presented cousin, with unanimous praise.

"He may be an artist, but he liked the little grey house," said Prue, as they stood in a sisterly row, warming their feet, first the right ones and then the left, like a kind of drill, before the wood fire on the hearth.

"He likes it because he is an artist; not in spite of being one, as you imply, Prudy," said Wythie.

"I am glad that he has come home to Hester, instead of becoming the Mikado's prime minister," said Rob, as if Lester Baldwin had narrowly missed that as an alternative.

"Tired, Mardy?" asked Wythie, turning to her mother as she entered, and Rob and Prue made room for her between them on the hearth.

"What lovely, lovely times we do have in the little grey house!" she added. It was the refrain that the Greys had sung to all their pleasant times ever since the old anxieties had been laid to rest.

[CHAPTER THREE]

ITS OLD FRIENDS

Friday was a gala-day in the little grey house. "Battalion B," the three tall Rutherford boys, were at Yale, pursuing their way towards their chosen vocations with commendable industry, and with no apparent detriment to their health. Every Friday the three B's came back to Fayre to spend "the week end," bringing with them the cheer which they had shed upon the Greys' pathway since their first meeting.

"It is like having six children," Mrs. Grey said happily, as she shook her duster out the dining-room window. "The boys' coming sheds joy upon the weekly task of sweeping and setting straight."

"It is a perpetual Thanksgiving Home-coming, isn't it, Mardy?" said Oswyth joyously. For though the Rutherfords were supposed to come to their own home, the Caldwell house, which they had occupied for nearly three years, with a competent housekeeper to preside over its destinies, their return was really to the little grey house, where they made their absence of five days a plea for spending the other two of each seven.

"Your sister-in-law's coming," called Lydia from her watch-tower, the window beside the kitchen sink.

Wythie hastily glanced around the room which her mother was dusting, while she herself was polishing silver, with newspapers carefully spread over the fine old mahogany dining-table. Aunt Azraella had been another Aunt Azraella since his family had been established in comfort by the success of the machine over which poor Sylvester Grey had spent the apparently fruitless hours which she had then so fiercely denounced. But she never could conquer her habit of criticism, and the girls still felt vague apprehension of what was coming at her heels when they saw their aunt crossing the grass. Rob was out; since the day when she alone had held her ground against Mrs. Winslow's opinion, and had thus been the means of winning for the family all that they now enjoyed, Wythie had been deposed from the first place in Aunt Azraella's respect, and Rob was now, as she had herself said, the favourite niece.

"Good-morning, Mary. Good-morning, Wythie. Is Rob about? She asked me to let her know if Tobias got sick again, so I came down. Elvira says she thinks he might as well be chloroformed, but Rob insisted on being told if the cat ailed; I think his leg is broken." Aunt Azraella delivered herself of her errand without giving any one time to reply to her opening salutation. She seated herself in the low rocking-chair, Mrs. Grey's favourite seat by the window, and began divesting herself of overshoes, and a cape which she wore over her coat. Seeing Wythie glance out at the grass she immediately said: "The grass isn't damp, I suppose you think, Wythie, and it doesn't seem to be, but in October, when the leaves are falling, you can't be certain. I think most people sow the seeds of their death in the fall of the year and the spring."

"Are you feeling better, Azraella?" asked Mrs. Grey. Wythie glanced up again and noticed that Mrs. Winslow looked pale, and less equal than usual to the demands of living.

"My cold's better, Mary, but I feel weak," said Aunt Azraella, settling back in her chair, having discarded her outer shell. "I think it must have been grippish, though I didn't know it at the time. If I should pass away, Mary, would the girls go back into all black?"

"Dear me!" ejaculated Wythie involuntarily.

"Oh, Azraella, I am sure I don't know! Why do you think of such discordant things on this bright morning?" expostulated Mrs. Grey. "I am sure that you are going to live a long, long time."

"It is impossible to be sure of anything of the sort," retorted Mrs. Winslow, as though such obdurate cheerfulness annoyed her. "Human life is most uncertain. I wish you would go out of black for Sylvester Mary,—I mean solid black—this fall. White with it would be pretty, and by another year you could wear sober greys."

"We are always trying to avoid anything like sober Greys, Azraella," said Mrs. Grey with her sunny smile, while in her heart she knew that all her life she should wear the widow's garb for a loss irreparable to her, though borne cheerfully, and courageously.

"You are too young—only a little past forty—to wear black long," said Aunt Azraella, as if grief and mourning were a matter of astronomical calculation, like eclipses of the sun. "What would you do if you had my wealth, Wythie? You know you are not nearly as well off as I am."

"Quite as well off as I want to be," said Wythie contentedly. "Four thousand a year is an ideal sum for four people. Enough to make life secure, too little to give us much bother, and not enough to allow us to be idle. Really, it is just the right sum. I never have thought what I should do if I were as rich as you are, Aunt Azraella."

"Your mind seems to be travelling rapidly from one thing to another, this morning, Azraella," smiled Mrs. Grey. "Tobias' leg, mourning, money—though these latter subjects are closely connected only too often."

"And the only thing I came for was Tobias' leg," added Mrs. Winslow. "I'm getting too warm here; I'll be overheated and catch more cold. You tell Rob when she comes that my cat's limping again and won't eat, and if she wants to see him, she can. If she don't we'll chloroform him—and I guess that's best."

Mrs. Winslow arose as she spoke, but Wythie pushed her gently back into her chair and knelt to put on her aunt's overshoes. "Rob will be up, Aunt," she said. "She has a surgeon's tastes and talents."

"I wonder if that's why she and that second Rutherford boy are specially good friends?" suggested Aunt Azraella, stooping her shoulders to receive her cape. "He's going to be a doctor, isn't he?"

"Yes, Bruce is studying hard for that end; he will make a good doctor. Dr. Fairbairn says he has a marked vocation for his profession," said Mrs. Grey.

"He's a good boy," said Aunt Azraella unexpectedly, "though they are all three fine specimens. Well, send Rob, if she wants to come. Good-bye."

"No fear of her not wanting to try to relieve Tobias and give him a chance to live his exemplary life longer," said Wythie as she let her aunt out of the side door by which she had entered.

"Is this your morning at home, Mardy?" called Prue from up-stairs where she was setting the chambers straight. "Rob is coming up the hill with Cousin Peace, and Mrs. Flinders is coming in the opposite direction with Polly."

"And the boys to-night!" sighed Wythie. "I don't believe I shall get done half I meant to do."

"That sigh must have been for Mrs. Flinders; it couldn't have been for Charlotte," said her mother.

"I've brought a trophy," announced Rob, coming into the room like a western breeze, eyes dancing and cheeks reddened by the October wind.

"Dear Charlotte, you are always the most welcome!" exclaimed Mrs. Grey, her voice tenderly caressing, while Wythie wound her arm around their beloved "Cousin Peace," as her other hand unfastened her coat.

"Robin insisted that I should not be in the way, and I did want so much to come that I am afraid it didn't take strong arguments to convince me that she was right," said the blind woman. "It is always good and better to come here."

"Why there's little Polly Flinders and her mother!" exclaimed Rob. "Now I wonder what has happened!"

She went to admit these last arrivals as she spoke, and Mrs. Flinders came gauntly into the room, followed by Polly, clinging silently to her adored Rob's hand, as if she were frightened.

Mrs. Flinders seated herself on the edge of a chair and began nervously fingering the fold of the shawl in which she defied passing fashions of coats and capes. "Did you hear?" she asked. And the Greys knew that something serious had brought her to them.

"You didn't hear?" Mrs. Flinders substituted, as the Greys all shook their heads. "It happened day before yesterday. He's had a stroke and the doctor says he won't never be able to use his hands again. He can talk's good's ever, and it ain't affected his mind, but he's done with life till he dies."

"How dreadful!" murmured Mrs. Grey, struck by the dramatic form of this closing statement, and greatly shocked at the hard fate which had overtaken the farmer who for a long time had taken care of the Grey place, sharing its product with the owners.

"What—You haven't made any plans yet, I suppose, Mrs. Flinders?"

"Yes, I have. I telegraphed his brother, and he telegraphed back I could bring him on to his house in Boston and see if anything could do any good, though I don't believe there's a doctor anywheres better than Dr. Fairbairn," said the woman, disdaining to wipe away the tears that had gathered in her eyes, and thus seeming to deny their presence. "You ain't heard the worst. Here I am, been slaving and scrimping all my days—you know just how near he's always been—and getting more tired every year, and losing all my children except Maimie there, who ain't any too rugged, and the only thing that kep' me up was thinking that we was saving and putting by each year, so's if anything should happen we'd have a tidy sum to pull through on. And as soon's he was struck, and Dr. Fairbairn told him the truth about himself, according to the doctor's principles of fair dealing with his patients, and had left, he called me to him, and he up and told me what I hadn't so much as an idea of. He's been drawing that money out of the bank and buying stocks through some kind of a firm that advertised in the papers just to catch country folks, and they kep' writing he was losing, with just enough gain once in a while to egg him on, till he used up every penny we had saved, and there ain't one red cent to show for all these years! It was worrying about it that brought on the stroke, I guess—land knows it's enough to give any one one! He never dared tell me, but when he was took he didn't dare not to. Now, I ask you, Mis' Grey, if that ain't just like a near man, to save and scrape and go without act'al necessaries of life, and then be caught by a glittering humbug that promises things even Maimie had ought to know it wouldn't fulfil?"

"I am afraid it is," assented Mrs. Grey, as the flood of Mrs. Flinders' passionate eloquence paused for her reply. "It's not an unusual story, but it is none the less a tragic one. I can't tell you how sorry I am for you—and for Mr. Flinders, too; poor, deluded, stricken man!"

Mrs. Flinders swallowed what barely escaped being a great sob, and Miss Charlotte asked: "But what does it all stand for, what degree of misfortune, I mean? What are you going to do, Mrs. Flinders?"

"How am I going to live, do you mean?" asked the poor woman, turning to the compassionate face that could not see her own. "The land knows; I don't. There's no use trying to plan ahead. That's what I've been doing, and now look at what's come of it! I know I'm going to his brother's in Boston with him, and that's as far's I know."

"But Polly?" suggested Rob, clasping closer the little girl on her knee.

"Yes, that's what I was coming to, Roberta," said Mrs. Flinders, turning to Rob with an embarrassment that was at the same time relief. "I've been studying all the way here how I'd say it to you. First I thought I'd tell you the story, and ask your advice about Polly. Then I thought you'd see plain enough what I was hoping, and I ain't any hand to beat around the bush, anyway; I like straight cuts best. Polly—'s you call her—sets more by you than by any one on this earth, not excepting me and her father. You took her here that time when she was pindling away out of the world, and I guess there ain't much doubt you saved her life. Would you see your way to taking her now for a spell? I hate to ask a favour, but I don't know which way to turn."

"We should have offered to take the child if you hadn't asked, Mrs. Flinders," said Mrs. Grey quickly. "Polly isn't any more trouble than the little mouse in the wall that Kiku can never catch, because it keeps in its hole there. Of course we will take little Polly, and keep her safe as long as you want to leave her with us. We are only too glad to get her back. Polly heard the last word my dear husband spoke, and Polly sang him into his long sleep while she was singing to her dolly."

Mrs. Grey spoke very softly, and Rob's face dropped on Polly's smooth head.

Polly's care-worn mother, worn into hardness and unloveliness, broke down at this. "Oh, Lord," she said, not as an exclamation, but prayerfully, "this life is queer. Sylvester Grey took just when he was ready to live, and that poor, mean-souled, grasping man of mine throwing away the work of his whole hard life, and then struck down helpless on top of it! Well, I'm more obliged to you for your taking Maimie, and for the way you do it than I can say. I won't let her stay any longer'n I can help, but I've told you the whole story, and you can see just what my prospects are. We've got to sell our farm—'tain't valuble, but it'll bring something, if only some one wants it, and after that I've got to support him and me and Maimie, till she's old enough to do for herself."

Mrs. Flinders had risen as she spoke and the Greys arose too.

"I have told you truly that Polly is welcome for just as long a time as you care to trust her to us—weeks, months, or years. She is a dear, quiet, gentle child, and we have plenty of room to shelter her and plenty of bread and butter to nourish her till life has something better to offer her than we can give her. And you know, Mrs. Flinders, that my girls and I will give the child the same care, in body, mind, and soul that Wythie, Rob, and Prue received. You need not fear that she will not be lovingly cared for, nor feel any anxiety about her. I will do my best."

The two mothers looked into each others' eyes; one was seamed, thin, work-hardened, work-worn, the other was beautiful, calm, clear-eyed, wearing in the brave smile that illumined her face the look of one that has conquered.

Mrs. Flinders put out her hard hand without a word. Then she shook hands with Miss Charlotte, Wythie, and Rob, and took Polly's little hand to lead her away.

"I'll send her up this afternoon," she said as she walked rigidly out of the door, speaking without turning her head. "As to the rest, whatever this blow is to us, Maimie's in luck."

"Isn't that tragic?" exclaimed Rob as soon as the outside door was safely shut.

"Have you taken Polly Flinders, mama?" cried Prue, coming swiftly down the stairs. "Good-morning, Cousin Peace. Oh, dear; don't you dread having Polly?"

"Not any more than I dread the sparrows around the door, hopping about for my crumbs, nor the dozen or so of cats who come daily for our larger crumbs," replied her mother stoutly. "I love to feel that the little grey house diffuses brighter colours on darkened lives. Polly really is as quiet as the little mouse I compared her to, and it isn't a great risk to take a child who lacks so much in her own home, is it Charlotte? Polly can't lose in coming to us, having very little to lose."

"That is not overstated, Mary," said Cousin Peace quietly, and even Prue reluctantly laughed.

"Well," sighed Wythie, who had not spoken for a long time, rising as she spoke. "Well, I feel dazed. That is such a sad story that we have just heard, made sadder by the barrenness of its manner of telling! And then we have acquired a child, indefinitely, and lost a farmer most definitely. And I meant to have made a pudding for dinner, and it is altogether too late. I feel dazed. I wonder if this is to be an era of happenings? I have noticed events move in schools, like mackerel."

"I really hope, Wythie, that children aren't going to move upon us in schools, like mackerel," cried Rob, recovering her brightness of face and manner. "For our income is distinctly limited. I should have to resume my story-telling."

This was a mild family joke; Rob's story-telling always loomed in the near distance as a possibility when the warm Grey hearts led them to generosities of which their purse was not capable.

The puddingless dinner was despatched with some haste, because Wythie and Rob had cake to make to be ready for Battalion B's keen appetite, made keener by abstinence from the little grey house's cake, and Rob had to go to the rescue of Aunt Azraella's Tobias. There were preparations to be made for the coming of Polly, which had to be compromised for the immediate present by a bed in the corner of Prue's room, for the afternoon was speeding away; it was almost time for the arrival of the boys, while Polly must be quite due.

Mrs. Flinders, herself, did not bring the child. A neighbour drove her up in the dilapidated buggy in which she had arrived to make her first visit to the Greys. It did not look much more purplish and worn, nor Polly much older for the time that had passed since then, though the buggy had been in constant use, and the child had attained the great age of nine.

Miss Charlotte lingered to welcome the boys, between whom and the sweet blind woman there was the strongest affection. Polly had hardly been established before three long shadows came wavering up the eastward mounting hill of the main street, and Basil, Bruce, and Bartlemy strode over the little front gate without stopping for the ceremony of opening it, in quite their old way, and burst into the little grey house, filling it from roof to cellar with their hearty voices shouting:

"Little Grey Mother, little Grey girls, where in the little grey house are you?" this was their liturgical chant every week upon arriving.

"Here is the mother, and here are the girls. Welcome Battalion B!" chanted the girls, and the ceremony of reception was ended.

Wythie, Rob, and Prue rushed to the door each trying to be the first to open it. Three strong brown hands clasped the three held out to meet them, and the girls, laughing and chattering, the boys chattering quite as loudly, came into the quiet green and white room, filling it with youth and joy.

Mrs. Grey sprang to meet her boys, holding out both hands, her face radiating pleasure as brightly as the girls' faces did. Cousin Charlotte pressed close behind her—it was not strange that the Rutherford boys counted the hours from Monday to Friday that lay between them and their glad home-coming.

"My but it's good to get here!" ejaculated Bruce, stretching his long legs to the fire, but looking at Rob whose warm red-brown hair, flashing eyes and crimson cheeks were every whit as heartening to look upon as were the flames licking up through the great logs.

"There's no place like it—John Howard Paine was perfectly right," said Basil with quiet conviction, watching Wythie's soft hands as they cut generous slices from the afternoon's cake baking and added the cookies the tall boys had "loved from their first meeting," as Bartlemy said.

"There is no news, except that we have Polly Flinders here for a visit with no end in sight; her father is paralysed and has squandered all his money in worthless stocks," Prue was saying, in reply to Bartlemy's demand for news.

"Whew! As though that weren't news enough!" Bruce cried, sitting erect. "Fancy Flinders squandering! And paralysed, is he? The poor old fellow! He has been rather decent since your father died."

"Very decent," assented Rob. "And Hester was up, and brought her cousin Lester Baldwin, fresh from Japan. He is just like her father. And Hessie has some new longing, which I did not quite get at; something to do with helping incurable cripple children in the tenements," she continued.

"That sounds like the most interesting and sensible scheme she has had yet," said Bruce heartily. "But this cousin—You like Mr. Baldwin; did you say the Japaned cousin was like him?" And Bruce scowled melodramatically.

"Precisely," said Rob. "Only nicer."

"Come up to our other house, Basil," said Bruce. "I won't linger here!"

"We'll be back after supper," he added, relenting as the battalion filed out of the little grey house. "We must go up to look at the Caldwell house, but we'll come home here as soon as our duty is done."

"It's good to get home, Wythie," said Basil turning back on the steps, just as he spoke and just as he turned back each week at the same hour.

[CHAPTER FOUR]

ITS DREADFUL NIGHT

"I saved a life to-day, Bruce," said Rob. The Rutherford boys had got back to the little grey house, the evening had shut in around it, shutting out all the world except that small fragment of it which centred around the old hearth.

Over in the corner, under her green-shaded sewing lamp, sat the mother without whom the happiness of the six young people would have been incomplete, and this was true although the six were drifting more and more into the habit of being three pairs. Bartlemy was never tired of vainly trying to satisfy himself in painting Prue's wonderful colouring, and, if the truth were told, Prue never tired of having him try. Bartlemy's talent was developing into something to be taken seriously; already his brothers were making up their minds to the first parting when they should be graduated together. Basil and Bruce had delayed college till Bartlemy could enter with them, but evidently their ways would lie together no further. Bartlemy must go away to study in Italy and France, for his boyish nickname of Fra Bartolomeo was proving prophetic—Bartlemy would be a painter.

Wythie and Basil never seemed to have very much to talk about, but they drifted beside each other invariably, and their many moments of silence seemed to be quite as full of utterance as their moments of speech, as the observant Grey mother noted with a satisfaction that could not be wholly free from regret.

As to Rob and Bruce they chattered ceaselessly, never far apart, always absorbed in identical interests, and with the same kind of a sense of humour—which it is said is the strongest cement of friendship. It was hard to tell much about Rob and Bruce. It was plain to be seen that Bruce was of the same opinion that he had been from the first, which was that Rob easily surpassed all other girls, including sweet Wythie and handsome Prue, just as Rob considered Battalion B collectively the best and cleverest boys in the world, and Bruce the head of the battalion. But their comradeship was so entirely free from the suggestion of sentiment that there was no predicting how it would end. As to Prue, she was but sixteen, and Mrs. Grey was too sensible to build up romances, or to encourage them for such a youthful heroine. She knew that Prue had plenty of that ambition which the other girls lacked, the ambition to shine, to see and to be seen in a larger world than the little grey house and Fayre offered her. She had never been the simple and contented little girl that both of her sisters had been, and the modest fortune that had come to the Greys had rather contributed to her restlessness than made her contented, for it had given Prue a taste of small luxuries which whetted her appetite for greater ones.

Mrs. Grey watched this tendency in her baby with uneasiness. This home-loving and essentially womanly woman believed that ambitions of Prue's sort never brought happiness to the woman whom they drew after their ignis fatuus attractions, but rather substituted heartburnings and envy for peace, holding out an unattainable gaol of triumph, which would prove empty and unsatisfying even should it be reached. Mrs. Grey was an old-fashioned woman, believing that love, not applause, good deeds, not brilliant ones rounded and filled a woman's life.

"Cricket on the hearth?" suggested Bruce, replying to Rob's statement that she had saved a life that day.

"No; Tobias, I set his leg and bandaged it. Aunt Azraella thought that he must die," said Rob. "You're not the only surgeon of this sextette."

"Tobias?" repeated Bruce in the dark. "Don't know the gentleman. Where was Dr. Fairbairn, and why should he die from a broken leg?"

"Don't you remember Aunt Azraella's cat, Tobias?" cried Rob. Adding, as Bruce uttered an enlightened: "Oh!" "Aunt Azraella says that she doesn't want Tobias chloroformed because Elvira would grieve for him, but I believe she has a sneaking liking for the old cat herself; she drew a long breath of relief when I repaired him and uttered my professional opinion that he would pull through. Aunt Azraella doesn't seem quite strong, and it makes her gentler. Do you suppose that it would be your duty as a physician to impair the health of positive and vigorous ladies, like Aunt Azraella?"

"'Health chiefly keeps an atheist in the dark,'" quoted Bruce promptly. "I don't remember seeing that question of medical ethics raised, but it opens up a wide field for argument. I think a great many people would be softer and sweeter for having less cast-iron nerves, and less self-sufficiency of health."

"Well, I think there are not a great many, but very few in America who suffer from cast-iron nerves," said Rob with a sigh. "I'm only beginning to realize what a horrible lot of misery there is in the world. I can understand your choice of a profession, Bruce."

"You always had medicinal qualities—" Bruce began.

"You mean medical," corrected Prue from her pose before Bartlemy near by.

"Do I?" asked Bruce. "I can perfectly understand my choice in every way, Rob. As to the misery, there is more than you will ever realize, I hope. But on the other hand as human beings grow better it will lessen. The higher the civilization the greater the capacity to suffer, but the stronger the sense of the rights of the weak and of our kinship and obligations even to 'our brother, the wolf,' as St. Francis used to say. His sanctity was great enough to reveal to him how endless was the chain of love—they hadn't found it out in his day."

"There doesn't seem to be much that girls, Grey girls in Fayre, for instance—can do," said Rob looking wistful.

"We know now, Robin, that everything is a system of units. We are all merely molecules, by comparison, but working together for a result," said Bruce. "You can make life sweet and wholesome all around you. You can help three big fellows, for instance, to march straight in a world full of pitfalls; you can cheer everybody and set the best of examples, which preaches wordlessly, to all who come near you. I think, as a unit, Rob, you might be considered a success. If all units did their cheerful best, as it is done in this little grey house, the collective result would be the millennium."

"Goodness, no!" cried Rob. Then she shook off her gravity and her face rippled into its usual merriment. "Did we ever talk so seriously before, Bruce, in all the days of our partnership? It must be the effect of Hester's visit and Mr. Flinders' sad state! Or is it the influence of Lydia? I have long wondered how we kept up our habit of laughter with Lydia about. She is like a perpetual Ash Wednesday—seems to be going about putting a pinch of ashes on every Grey forehead all the time, and saying: 'Remember, man, that dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return!' And she conveys the impression of having such a very poor opinion of the quality of our dust! I wonder if Lyddie really can be but twenty-four years old! I can't believe it! Isn't it odd how many things one knows to be true, yet can't believe? Like India, for instance, and that the world is round, and all those things."

"All what things?" laughed Bruce. "Don't you believe in India—after Kipling?"

"Kim is so vivid that I can't believe it—don't pretend you don't understand, Bruce, because you always do," said Rob.

"I know," assented Bruce. "The wonderful detail that is vivid and unreal at once, as dreams are vivid and unreal. Rob, you are in a queer mood to-night; you have somewhat the effect on me this moment which you are trying to describe—you are most vivid, yet you seem unreal, at least unlike yourself."

"I feel so," agreed Rob promptly. "I feel excited, stirred, restless, happy, unhappy—all ways, but my normal way. What is making Basil so much more talkative than usual to-night?"

"His plans, I fancy; he is probably telling Wythie what he is considering," Bruce answered regarding his elder with a twinkle.

What Basil was saying was nothing, apparently to call forth the twinkle.

"Then you approve the idea?" Rob heard him say.

"Yes," said Wythie quietly. "I like the Caldwell place very much; it is dignified and beautiful. If you really mean to make literature your career, and to study, Basil, and became a specialist in bird study, besides writing a novel or so—you said a novel or so? Well, then," Wythie continued as Basil nodded a smiling assent, "I do not see how you could have a better place in which to live and work than in Fayre, so quiet, yet so near town, and in the old Caldwell place, among its elms and Norwegian pines."

"And you like it, Wythie? You think it could be made a home to be happy in?" persisted Basil.

Wythie looked up without embarrassment, her face shining with confidence.

"Anywhere may be that, Basil," she said. "And the Caldwell place more than most. If I were you I would buy it. And it is certainly an irresistible bargain at that price."

"Basil is talking of buying the Caldwell place, you see," said Bruce. "He has fully made up his mind, since father's latest letter came, to give up all thought of a business career after we are graduated and 'commence author,' as our English cousins say. I honestly think he is warranted in the choice; I suppose he will do something the sort of thing John Burroughs does, as well as write novels—everybody writes novels."

"Except you and me," smiled Rob. "Must you go? How short these intercollegiate evenings are!"

"Intercollegiate, Rob?" echoed her mother, putting down her work and coming forward as the three tall guests rose to take their leave.

"Aren't they between college?" asked Rob unabashed. "Just two little full days sandwiched in between the five of hard labour at Yale."

The little grey house settled down to slumber soon after it was left to itself. The brisk autumnal winds are conducive to deep sleep, and Wythie and Rob in their room, and Prue in hers, opening from it, in which little Polly Flinders was tucked away in the corner, slept dreamlessly far into the night.

Then the sound of voices penetrated their sleep, far-off calls, men shouting, and, at last, a hand was shaking Wythie and Rob into wakefulness.

They sat erect, trembling and startled, to see their mother bending over them, a hand on the shoulder of each, as she cried: "Wythie, Rob, wake up, wake up!"

"What has happened?" cried the frightened girls on their feet in an instant.

"Charlotte's house is burning; they have called us. We must go," gasped Mrs. Grey. "Put on warm clothing; make haste! Prue, stay here with Lydia and that child," she added as Prue, wide eyed and pale, joined the group.

Somehow Wythie and Rob found themselves dressing; everything went wrong, yet they managed, after a fashion, to get themselves sufficiently protected from the chill of the night air, and found themselves with their mother, escorted by some of their men neighbours down the street. The elms stood out against a background of red, from which tongues of flame occasionally shot up, dulling the red glow on the sky, and revealing the smallest twigs. It was Cousin Peace's house which was burning! The girls repeated the words as they ran, trying to make them real, convey a meaning. Poor blind Cousin Peace! With this thought Wythie stopped short.

"Where is she? Where is Miss Grey?" she demanded.

It was Lawyer Dinsmore who held her arm; she felt his hand tremble on it as he answered: "We do not know; we could not find her—" Wythie groaned, and he hastily added: "It must be that she is safe, Wythie. There was time to get out, but no one has seen her. Her senses are so abnormally acute that she must have known of the fire before the alarm was given, and escaped."

"Unless she slept, and the smoke—" Wythie could not go on. "Hurry!" she murmured.

Mr. Dinsmore did not attempt to reassure her further; indeed, the suggestion that Miss Charlotte, alone in the house, might have been asleep and overcome by smoke had occurred to him before Wythie voiced it. It was not pleasant to wonder why it was that the alarm had been given from outside, not from within the doomed building.

Mrs. Grey and her daughters were stationed beyond the reach of danger where the Rutherford boys soon found and joined them.

There was no question of saving the house; from the first it was doomed, and it would have been most painful to have stood helplessly by while the peaceful house that had absorbed so much of its blind mistress' calm repose was destroyed, had not all other thought been swallowed up in the absorbing anxiety which left Miss Charlotte's fate doubtful. For the feeling was growing among the knot of bystanders around the Greys that, if she were safe, they should have had some assurance of it, that, by this time, some one should have come forward who could tell them definitely where Miss Grey had taken refuge.

"It is unbearable," groaned Rob at last, through her set teeth.

"I will go around to the other side and see if I can't find out something, Rob," said Bruce with a glance at the girl's agonized face. "Look after them, Basil, Bart, if I can't get back very soon."

His tall form moved through the crowd, elbowing its way until it was lost to sight, before the Greys fully realized that he was going.

Moments passed, a quarter of an hour, and Mrs. Grey, held fast on either hand by her girls, watched with them the mounting flames, tense, silent with the misery that made each second seem an hour. Bruce did not return, the fire licked and burst its awful way around the eaves, around Cousin Peace's chamber window! Wythie hid her face, shuddering; she could not look.

Suddenly a great roar went up from the crowd, and many voices together shouted words which the onlookers could not catch. They cheered mightily, and then a deadly stillness settled upon the mass of human beings.

"What is it?" Rob asked of a man who pushed his way towards them.

"Shut up!" Wythie heard another man mutter to this new-comer, and on this hint the latter snarled: "I don't know. Nothin', I guess." But Rob felt sure that the snarl was to conceal something, and that it did not spring from bad temper.

Suddenly the crowd seemed to go stark mad. Swaying, surging, pushing, it began to yell, hoarse, loud, frightful, like some sort of a monster.

"Come out, come back! The roof's caving! It's going! Come out!" the crowd roared, plainly articulate to the group on its edge, which was most vitally interested.

"Some one's in there, in that horrible fire!" gasped Rob. With one instinctive movement Basil and Bartlemy turned and looked at each other, reading each in the other's eyes the same thought. It was so exactly like Bruce!

Rob caught the look, saw the boys' hands meet in a tight clasp, saw their faces turn paler than before. Instantly she guessed, and shared their fear.

"Not he! Not Bruce!" she groaned.

Before the boys could answer a great shout rent the air, a shout that was triumphant. For an instant Rob forgot Cousin Peace.

"He's out!" she cried, and Basil and Bartlemy dropped each others' hands to steady her as she swayed.

"I shan't faint," she cried. "I never faint. They're cheering. He's out, he's out!"