The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Little Grey House, by Marion Ames Taggart, Illustrated by Ethel Franklin Betts

THE LITTLE GREY HOUSE

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BY THE SAME AUTHOR

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Miss Lochinvar

[So the mowing began, Prue preceding.]

THE
LITTLE GREY HOUSE

BY

MARION AMES TAGGART

FRONTISPIECE BY ETHEL FRANKLIN BETTS

NEW YORK
McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO.
MCMIV

Copyright, 1904, by
McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO.

Published, October, 1904

TO
ANNA WENTWORTH HECKER

CONTENTS

THE LITTLE GREY HOUSE

CHAPTER ONE
ITS CHILDREN

"I am going to cut that grass—try to cut it, I mean—before I'm an hour older," said Roberta Grey, drawing on an old pair of her father's dog-skin gloves with a do-or-die-in-the-attempt air that was at once inspiring and convincing. "This whole place looks like an illustrated edition of 'How Plants Grow'—Grey. We've got to cut the grass or put up a sign: To Find the House Walk Northward Through the Prairie. Signed, Sylvester Grey. Will you help, Wythie and Prue?"

Oswyth, the eldest daughter, a year the senior of sixteen-year-old Roberta, looked up with her pleasant smile. "Help walk northward through the prairie, help find the house, or help cut the grass, Rob?" she asked.

"Help cut the grass, and the rest won't be necessary," laughed Rob. "Come on! I've borrowed Aunt Azraella's lawn-mower, though I truly believe I might as well have borrowed the cheese-scoop—that grass is too old and tough to bow down to a mere lawn-mower."

Prue, being but fourteen, jumped up with alacrity to accept Rob's invitation, but Oswyth laid down her sewing and arose with a reluctant sigh—she was not fond of violent exercise, and the afternoon sun was still warm.

The three girls stood a few moments on the low door-step, letting the breeze pleasantly flutter their gingham dresses and lift their ribbons, before setting to their difficult task. The same breeze blew the tall grass which Roberta longed to lay low in undulating ripples like those in the blue and pink fabrics, which drifted into the picture like cornflowers and poppies. The feathery sprays of the millet and red-top, the wands of the timothy were so pretty as they bowed and swayed that, although they were so lawless and rank, it seemed almost a pity to cut them. Oswyth thought so, but Roberta felt no misgivings—except of her own strength.

The little grey house stood well back from the street under splendid trees, set in the midst of a place so wholly disproportioned to its size that it looked in the present unkempt condition of the grounds not unlike a little island of grey rock, entirely surrounded by turbulent and billowy green water.

Everybody called it "the little grey house," and the name was doubly appropriate, since it did not matter whether one capitalized and emphasized the adjective, and spoke of it as "the little Grey house," or left to the adjective its natural function, and spoke of the tiny home as "the little grey house." For, as to color, it could not well have been greyer. It had once—not recently—been painted grey, but wind and weather had stripped it of its artificial greyness while tinting its clapboards into soft, indelible tints even more conformable to its title.

And, for the rest, Sylvester Grey lived there, as had his forebears for three generations preceding him—all Greys from the beginning. People said that it was "a good thing that Sylvester Grey had had a home left him, for he never could have earned one."

It was true that Mr. Grey had never been able to make much money, nor to keep what little he did make. "He was as good a man as ever lived," people said again, "but he had no faculty." And to lack "faculty" was, indeed, to lack much.

It puzzled and—of course—worried the community in which they lived to know "how the Greys got on." Mrs. Grey could have enlightened it had she chosen, but she did not choose. She hardly realized, however, how much of the explanation lay in her own personality, her mere existence. For she—great-hearted, large-souled woman—had "faculty" enough for two; which was fortunate, as she had to contrive for five.

There was a little income—very slender—of her own, and for the rest she "managed." She had been a Winslow, of Mayflower descent, and Aunt Azraella Winslow, Mrs. Grey's brother's widow—herself a Brown—said, with mingled approval and commiseration, that "when one of us, of the old stock, sets a hand to the plough the corn grows."

Sylvester Grey was a dreamer, handsome, frail, sensitive, and clever. Sometimes his teeming brain brought practical results to his family, but these crystallizations of genius were rarer than was comfortable.

Mr. Grey was perfecting a machine for making bricquettes. There was not a very clear notion in his town—Fayre—what this meant, but it was understood vaguely to be a machine which transformed the coal-dust and waste of the mines into solid little bricks for fuel. Aunt Azraella said "it was exactly like Sylvester to moon over coal-dust while Mary needed kindling-wood."

Oswyth, the oldest girl, whom he had named out of his delight in old Saxon sounds, loved her father tenderly, without understanding him; Prue, petted, pretty little Prue, young for her years, loved him a trifle impatiently, but Roberta, daring, ambitious, active Roberta, loved the dreaming father passionately, and understood that he could not feel the present pinch when visions of a greater good lured him on, understood further that no personal pinch appealed to him very strongly when science led him into her fairyland, and he felt himself her servant. And Roberta alone, of all who loved him, understood the invention to which he was giving his days and many nights, and she believed enthusiastically that some time the bricquette machine would make the family fortune and her father's glory. Yet sometimes her high courage failed, and when the makeshifts and deprivations to which the Greys were condemned bore most heavily upon her she could not help acknowledging—though only to herself—that the happy time was sadly long in coming.

But it was not one of these disheartening days when she set out to cut the grass, and Rob's heart was as gay within her as a sixteen-year-old heart should be, as she looked out on the field which she meant to make a field of victory.

Her bright, dark eyes, which were always flashing with as many changing expressions as there were minutes in the day, danced with mischief; her rippling mouth and chin—Rob's face was all ripples—looked as though the July breeze were playing with them as it played with the lush grass. With both hands she pushed back her dark hair—full of gleams of red and gold in the sunshine—as she ran down the steps and around the corner to fetch the borrowed lawn-mower, for Rob's hair was forever breaking its orderly braided bounds and turning into rakish odds and ends of curls about her brow and ears. She came back triumphantly, pushing the lawn-mower around the corner, and it rattled on the old flagged walk as she tipped it up on its rear wheels and dodged the box bordering the paths.

"Who's first?" she cried. "Age and muscle, or beauty and babyhood?"

"B. and B.," said Prue, unblushingly owning up to both facts as one well acquainted with the value of her big dark eyes and contrasting veil of golden hair, and one made thoroughly to realize that she was the youngest. "Give it to me, Rob; I want the first cut."

"'Give me the dagger!' Here you are, then, Lady Macbeth. You'll find the first cut anything but tender—you speak as if it were turkey." And Rob gave the mower-handle into Prue's eager fingers.

Prue ran lightly down the flagged walk with her prize. "I shall begin at the gate," she announced, "so if we don't quite finish it to-day people who go by can see we are beginning to get our grass cut."

Oswyth laughed and groaned. "Finish it to-day! Cut the whole place!" she exclaimed.

Oswyth, with her sweet, placid face, smooth, shining brown hair, calm blue eyes and quiet lips, was unlike either of the others. Pretty she was in her demure way, and no one minded if her soft cheeks were a bit too plump, since their tint was really the "peaches and cream" of which we read. Wythie was a most womanly and wholesome little woman, the sort of girl one sees at first glance must comfort the mother who possesses her.

Prue, undismayed by Wythie's dismay, turned the lawn-mower sharply to the right for her first bold plunge into the grass—and stopped. The dry, stout stalks resisted her onslaught, and the little girl pushed, pulled back, pushed again, bending over the handle till her flying, golden hair fell forward into the yellowing grass, but the machine would not stir. Prue dropped the handle, straightened her slender form, and, with one movement of both hands, disclosing a face already flushed and speckled by her efforts, threw back her hair and threw up the game.

"I can't budge it, Rob!" she panted. "No one could."

"Want to try, Wythie, or shall I?" asked Rob.

"Want to? I don't quite see why anyone should want to," said Oswyth, "but I suppose we each must, so here goes." And she heroically came forward to take her turn, laying her dimpled and well-cushioned little pink palms on the cross-bar of the handle somewhat gingerly.

She cut a glorious though short swath of four feet in length, happening on more tender grass, and having more strength than Prue, but here she, too, met her Waterloo, for the mower stood still, balking as effectually as all the donkeys in Ireland.

"There's no use in your taking it, Rob," Wythie gasped, after turning hither and thither with no result. "If you cut a few feet it would be the most that you could do, and what difference would it make out of so much?"

"You don't suppose I'll yield without striking a blow?" cried Roberta, darting at the lawn-mower as if she were no further removed from Samson than his great-granddaughter at most. "I have meant to cut this grass for ages—it shows that," she added, laughing. "Besides, it always matters a lot to me to be beaten. 'Men o' Harlech, in the hollow!'"

Rob began singing the splendid Welsh battle-song as she in turn laid hold of the handle, as if she should not only succeed, but have breath to spare for a war-cry.

Roberta was slender, taller that Oswyth, but her young muscles were strong and well-poised, and to whatever task she essayed she brought an excess of nerve-power that rarely failed to bear her to victory on the very crest of the wave. She attacked the tough grass now with such enthusiasm that the balking lawn-mower yielded to her as most things did, and ran along quite meekly for a little while. But then it stopped, and when it did stop not Cleopatra's galley, buried under centuries of Nile mud, was more motionless than was Aunt Azraella's lawn-mower.

Rob pushed and pulled as both her sisters had pushed and pulled, losing her patience as she did so.

"No good, Bobs," said Prue, laconically and a trifle maliciously, for the family only nicknamed Rob "Bobs," after Lord Roberts, Kipling's "Bobs Bahadur," in allusion to her indomitable pluck and generalship, and used the name in moments of triumph, of which this was scarcely one.

Roberta pushed away her rebellious locks with the back of a slightly grimy hand.

"If I only had a scythe!" she murmured. "No machine can get through this jungle—I feared as much. I'd mow it if I had a scythe, though!"

"Now, Rob, you mustn't so much as think of one!" said Wythie, decidedly. "You know Mardy would be frantic if you were to swing one just once—you're so reckless! Promise you won't get one."

"I solemnly pledge myself to abstain from all intoxicating and entirely inaccessible scythes," said Rob, holding up both hands. "Where in the world should I get one, Wythie?"

"You always get anything you set your heart on," said Wythie, somewhat loosely, yet speaking from her knowledge of her sister.

"Do I? Then it must be that I set my heart on very little," interjected Rob.

"Would Mr. Flinders cut it?" suggested Prue.

"Even an infant must realize how very sharey Mr. Flinders is in carrying on the place on shares, Prudence, my child," said Rob, gravely. "He may be honest in giving us our third of the vegetables for the use of the land, but I always suspect him of opening the lettuce-heads and rolling them up again to make sure ours haven't more leaves than his."

"Oh, you know Mr. Flinders won't do one thing extra, Prue," said Oswyth, hastily, fearing Prue might resent being called an infant.

"He could have the grass for his horse," said Prue.

"'A merciful man regardeth the life of his beast,' Prudy," said Rob. "Our grass is half daisy-stalks, half chicory, half dandelions, half some other things—pigweed, probably—and the other half may be grass."

Both her sisters laughed. "You always were strong in fractions, Rob," said Oswyth.

"Had to practise the most fractional fractions ever since I was born—why shouldn't I be? There come those new Rutherford boys down the street," said Rob, as three tall figures, arms locked, marching abreast at a good pace, swung into sight at the head of the street. "They seemed nice when we met them the other day; I wish they'd say they'd cut our grass."

"I thought you scorned to admit boys' superiority in anything, Rob," said Wythie, slyly.

"I don't admit it; I only act on it—if I have to," said Rob.

"Why don't you wish we could afford to hire a man to keep the place decent, like other people, while you're wishing?" asked Prue, rather bitterly.

"Because I don't see the use of wishing for what you can never have," said Rob, quickly.

"We can't be rich—not till Patergrey gets the bricquette machine done—and since it's impossible, why, it's impossible. But it would be perfectly possible for those big creatures to swing scythes and get this grass mown in short order—it would be rather a lark for them. And if it ever does get cut, and I don't keep it short with Aunt Azraella's mower, then it will be because I've forgotten the art of wheedling that beloved lady into lending it."

"How did you get it this time?" asked Oswyth.

"Talked Mayflower and Pilgrim Rock—it never fails," said Rob. "She thinks now there was a Brewster in her family, and that probably through him she goes back to glory. And you know what Mardy let slip one day about the parental Brown and his remarkably good cobbling! Poor Aunt Azraella! It must be painful to miss the dead in the way she does! Miss having had ancestors to die. Though I don't know why good honest cobbling isn't as good as lots of things they did in colonial days—better than the spelling, for instance. Mercy, those boys are almost here! Is my hair too crazy, and have I grass stains on my nose, Wythie?"

"I don't think it's right to run down our posterity," said Prue, pulling her ribbons and spreading her hair rapidly. "I'm very proud of my descent." And before Oswyth could suggest that she did not mean posterity, three straw hats arose in the air, revealing three flushed, handsome, boyish faces, and three cheery voices called: "Good-afternoon, Miss Oswyth, Miss Rob, Miss Prue."

And the oldest Rutherford boy—he looked nearly eighteen—added: "Are you farming?"

"We're harming—our tempers," cried Rob. "Also a borrowed lawn-mower."

"Won't you come in and rest?" added Oswyth. "You look warm."

"We've been up to the river swimming; it's pretty warm in the sun, walking fast. What's wrong with your tempers? Maybe we'd better keep out." But as he spoke the eldest boy opened the low gate, and they all came in.

Oswyth led the way to the house, and Prue and the youngest Rutherford were dispatched for chairs to set on the lawn, for the little grey house had been built before the day of piazzas. Before the six young people were fairly settled a figure in white appeared in the doorway, smiling invitingly over a big tray laden with glasses, some plain cookies, and the beautiful old glass pitcher, of which the Greys were so proud, full of lemonade and tinkling with ice.

"Oh, that's Mardy all over—always thinking of something for us!" cried Oswyth, as she and Rob sprang forward to relieve their mother of her burden.

CHAPTER TWO
ITS NEIGHBORS

"Won't you come and see the new Rutherford boys, Mardy? We met them at Frances Silsby's the other night," said Roberta, as she took the tray from her mother, while Oswyth took the pitcher.

The three tall lads arose as Mrs. Grey came toward them. "Dear me!" she smiled. "I never would dream you were new Rutherford boys if I espied you at a distance, but quite old ones. I am glad to see you."

"We are glad to be here," said the oldest boy, shaking heartily the motherly hand held out to him, and smiling back into the kindly eyes which always won young things, quadruped or biped, and were especially attractive to a motherless lad. "I am Basil Rutherford, this is my second mate, Bruce, and this my little baby brother Bartlemy. Stand up straight, Tom Thumb, and ask Mrs. Grey if she doesn't think you ought to be put in an incubator. We're so afraid we won't be able to raise him," added Basil, with a tragic glance at the girls.

Fifteen-year-old Bartlemy stood erect to his full six feet one of height, and grinned with the helpless good-nature of a frequent victim.

The Rutherfords were very much alike, brown-skinned, brown-haired, blue-eyed boys, with honesty and kindliness shining from their fine faces. Mrs. Grey made up her mind about them on the spot—as she usually did on meeting strangers. "Nice creatures!" she thought, and laughed as she surveyed Bartlemy.

"I doubt that you could raise him—unaided," she said. And the boys, in their turn, mentally labelled her: "Nice woman."

"But none of you is precisely stunted," added Mrs. Grey, looking up from her own considerable altitude into Basil's, and then into Bruce's face, both of which topped her by several inches.

"Bruce is five feet eleven, good measure, and I am five feet ten," said Basil. "All the Rutherfords grow rank."

"Like our grass," added Roberta, who had been quiet as long as she could be. "There's nothing but length—and poor quality—to the grass, though," she added, with a wicked look, to which she served an immediate antidote by pouring lemonade into the three rapidly emptying glasses.

"You are new neighbors, I think," said Mrs. Grey, calmly removing a caterpillar from her cuff, and thereby rising high in Bartlemy's estimation, who was an embryo naturalist and scorned nerves.

"We're here for a time—we came three weeks ago. We've taken the Caldwell place, and our guardian put us here with a tutor to get ready for college," said Basil. "I'm in my eighteenth year, but I'd like to wait for Bart if I could. And he's not as stupid as he looks—we think we can enter together in a year; we'd like to keep on side by side as long as we can—we've done it so far."

"How pleasant that is to hear!" cried Mrs. Grey, heartily. "I'm sure you'll gain far more than you lose by waiting. You speak as though you were alone; are you boys all there are in the family?"

"Our father is alive," said Basil, "but he is in the navy, and he's usually about the farthest father I know—just now he's in Japan for two years more. Our mother died when Bart was six. We wish she hadn't—" Basil stopped short. He had no idea that he was going to say this, but the look that sprang into Mrs. Grey's eyes when he alluded to his mother's loss had slightly upset him.

Mrs. Grey understood. "I wish that she could have stayed to be proud of her three tall sons," she said. "But perhaps Wythie and Rob and Prue can coax you here to share in the mother feeling. We're fond of motherliness in the little grey house, Basil, and we do have good times in it. I must run away, or there will be a sad time in it when the girls come in hungry. They will tell you about our little grey house and its Grey denizens. Will you come often, and help us have good times?" She included the three lads in her warm glance, and quick affection leaped back at her from the three pairs of dark blue eyes. Mrs. Grey mothered everything that came near her, being one of the sort of women with a genuine talent for loving. She longed to bless and protect all creation, and fell to planning as she spoke how to give these motherless lads the womanly sympathy they must want in their setting out on the battle of life.

"Indeed, we will come," said Bruce, speaking suddenly and for the first time.

"You're very good, Mrs. Grey," said Basil, quietly, but he pressed her hand till it ached, and she knew that he had read aright and would accept her invitation.

"The Greys," began Roberta, in a perfectly dispassionate, narrative tone, as her mother went toward the house, "are exceedingly nice people—I can truly say I know none whom I like better. They are of most ancient, trailing arbutus descent——"

"Rob!" ejaculated Oswyth, reproachfully, not knowing how their new acquaintances would take this nonsense.

"Fact! Isn't the trailing arbutus the Mayflower?" said Rob, unabashed. "It's a more appropriate name, too, because the descendants of the Pilgrims have 'trailed clouds of glory as they came,' like the soul in Wordsworth's Intimations of Immortality—I trust you have heard of Wordsworth, little boys? If you doubt that the Greys are of Mayflower descent on the maternal side, just go ask their aunt-in-law, Azraella Winslow."

"Oh, Rob; how can you?" cried Oswyth, distressed.

"Why, that's true, Wythie; they won't have to ask her, will they?" said Rob, innocently.

"No, don't ask; just listen. Well, the Greys are poor, but respectable. I hope that they are very respectable, for I can testify from accurate knowledge that they are very poor. They have lots of books, worn shabby, but as good as ever, and the two oldest girls study hard at home—as well as they can—but the youngest they contrive to keep at school. The second daughter is digging away at German alone, and she wishes that everything wasn't divided off into masculine and feminine genders, like a Quaker meeting. However, my brethren, this is not history—only natural history, maybe. To return to the Grey Annals: The dear father Grey is a genius, and he is inventing something so clever and valuable that one day the Greys will be rich. The darling mother Grey is perfect, and a heroine, and nobody on earth could love her enough. The Grey girls help her do the housework, and they economize—economize terrific! But they do have fun, and they're happy, and when you came along they were economically trying to cut their own grass, under the rash leadership of the second daughter, and the grass would not succumb to a mower. And that brings my story right up to date—it may be continued in our next issue."

The Rutherford boys evidently understood perfectly how to take Roberta; there was no occasion for Oswyth's anxiously puckered brow, nor Prue's flushed cheeks and mortified look. All three boys recognized pluck and admired it in the brief outline sketch of the Greys which Rob had given them. Bruce especially, Rob's senior by half a year, as Basil was Wythie's, liked the spirit which she displayed, and which was largely his own sort of courage.

"Our next issue is now ready for the press," he said. "The three Rutherfords—all B's, and so naturally inclined to be busy—were coming down the road as the Grey girls struggled with the stalled mower, and resolved to rescue the brave damsels. High and low they sought till they had found three scythes, or scythes and sickles. Armed with these they marched down upon the grey house, cut the grass with wild hallos, and returned triumphant to the Caldwell place. Come on, Bas; hurry up, Bart; we'll shave the grey place clean."

"Oh, you three long angels!" cried Rob, starting up rapturously as the three Rutherfords arose to carry out Bruce's suggestion with prompt enthusiasm. "I said when I saw you coming that I wished you'd cut this tough grass for us, but I never thought of it again. Wait a minute; I want to speak to Mardy."

She darted to the house and came flying back again from around the rear corner before the others had time to wonder why she had gone.

"It's all right; I knew she'd say yes," Rob panted. "Come to-morrow afternoon, if you really want to do it, and we'll ask Frances down, and have some sort of supper on the newly shaved lawn, among the sweet-smelling grass—even this weedy grass will be fragrant, newly mown. Will you do that?"

"It will be great!" said the boys, heartily. "Of course we'll come." And they bade the Grey girls good-by, with much satisfaction in their first call.

"Nice girls," said Basil, as they swung up the road, the tallest, Bartlemy, in the middle, an arm resting on each tall brother's shoulder. "Which is the nicest?"

"Hard to say," began Bartlemy, but Bruce cut him short with decision, saying:

"Prue's as pretty as a picture; Oswyth's pretty, too, though not as pretty, and she's a lady, but Rob's a dandy! She's got go and pluck, and did you ever see such a face for crinkling up? I had to watch it; you couldn't tell what it would do next—pretty, she is too—splendid eyes and hair."

The girls echoed the boys' favorable opinion of them, and it was re-echoed that night at bedtime between the large room which Oswyth and Roberta shared and the small one Prue occupied in solitary dignity.

The Greys were early astir on the following morning, for "the mowing-bee of the B's," as Rob called it, entailed extra labor, well worth it though it was.

Supper, when one does not consider expense, is a simple enough problem, but supper when there is little to spend means expenditure of strength instead of money.

Mrs. Grey cut the thinnest slices of her own famous bread, buttered it perfectly, and set it away in the ice-chest while she made egg sandwiches and chopped crispy lettuce out of the garden—lettuce which did not look—in spite of Rob's suspicion—as though the farmer who carried on the Grey garden on shares had "unrolled it to count its leaves."

"Jenny Lind cake," quite good enough for anyone—provided it is eaten very fresh—may be made with one egg. Oswyth beat up two of these cakes, and into one stirred juicy blueberries, while the other she baked in jelly-tins, and iced and filled with caramel filling.

Rob and Prue carried out the table and set it on the lawn. The little grey house was well filled with old blue and white china, odds and ends of pink and white also, queer, dainty sprigged cups and saucers, and rare old pewter which it was Oswyth's joy to keep bright. So the table when decked looked really beautiful, and the girls surveyed it with pride, knowing that more sumptuous suppers than theirs there might be, but few more attractive, and they trusted to their own gayety to secure it one of the jolliest. Frances Silsby came down early. She was Oswyth's and Rob's—more particularly Rob's—one intimate friend; the Grey girls were too sufficient to themselves to need outsiders. She found them hurrying over their dressing, having scrambled the dinner dishes away, for the laborers were sure to arrive early.

The gowns the girls wore were not only simple in themselves, but had done good service and showed in many places their mother's artistic darning. But they were becoming lawns, and when the laughing young faces came up through their fresh ruffles, and the soft, gathered waists settled around the young figures, Oswyth was as sweet in her pale blue, Roberta as brilliant in her rose pink, and Prue as pretty in her snowy white as new gowns could have made them—and, fortunately, were quite as happy.

The strains of the anvil-chorus floated down the street before Rob and Prue were ready—Oswyth managed always to be ready—and the clash of anvils was marked by the click of scythes. Looking out, the girls saw the Rutherfords, three abreast, as usual, implements over shoulders and flashing in the sunshine, bearing down on the little grey house.

"Oh, hurry, Rob; give me my stick-pin, Wythie—they're coming!" cried Prue.

"Don't wear your stick-pin, Prue; you're sure to lose it out of that thin stuff. Take my bow-knot-pin," said Wythie, proffering it.

"Oh, that old-fashioned thing! Well, I suppose boys won't know—I'll take it, Wythie. Ready, Rob?" cried Prue.

"Would be if my shoe-lacing hadn't come untied, and I stepped on it and broke it. I wouldn't dare tell anyone what I thought of shoe-lacings!" cried Rob, trying to tie the broken string with fingers that quivered with impatience.

"Let me, Rob; you're too crazy," said Frances, kneeling before her friend.

Rob resigned herself with a sigh. "Blessings on thee, little Fan," she said. "Please go down, Wythie and Prue. Tell the boys we'll be there just as soon as we finish singing 'Blest be the tie that binds.'"

Wythie and Prue departed laughing, and Rob and Frances followed very soon.

"Where shall we begin?" asked Bruce, after greetings were over.

"At the beginning," said Rob, but Wythie, with a glance at her irrepressible sister, said:

"Wherever you like; it really doesn't matter. And we girls are going to rake after you."

"You are little Boazes,
Following your noazes;
We are gleaners, like to Ruth,
Raking hay while in our youth,
Which we think a better line
Than making hay in the sunshine,"

sang Rob, with one of her sudden inspirations.

"Is this going to be a comic-opera, and are we taking part as stage peasants, or really working?" demanded Basil, sternly, though he looked surprised, and his eyes danced.

Bruce threw up his hat in applause, and Bart stared open-mouthed.

"Rob is demented, but not dangerous," said Frances, who had known the boys some time.

"You know I warned you."

"Well, now at it," said Bruce.

"Be sure you don't kill any young ground sparrows," said Wythie, anxiously.

"Oh, let me go ahead and scare up the mothers if there are any nests, then we'll see where they fly up," cried Prue.

"Go ahead, Paula Revere; rouse the inhabitants," said Bartlemy.

[So the mowing began, Prue preceding], her cloud of yellow hair floating over her white gown as she scuffed her feet through the long grass, the boys in their white-flannel shirts, turned away at the necks, swinging their long scythes in their strong, long arms, and Oswyth, Frances, and Rob fluttering after them in their floating summer gowns, raking industriously. It was as pretty a picture as any figure in the cotillon and quite as much fun.

Presently they all began to sing, Prue and Frances in their high sopranos, Oswyth in her sweet, low soprano, Rob in her soft alto, Basil a high tenor, Bruce, a barytone, and Bart something he sincerely believed was a heavy bass. People driving by stopped to look and listen, and Mr. Grey sat over his models in a happy dream, as the sound wafted in to him, while Mrs. Grey could hardly keep her mind on the cold meat she was slicing and the biscuits she was making for tea.

"Bless their dear, happy hearts!" she thought. "How little it takes to rejoice them. They won't know if I go without some little things to make up the trifling cost of their bee."

The work was only too short, it seemed to the girls, though perhaps the boys were glad to stop when Mrs. Grey came out on the steps at five and struck the brass-bowl, which was the Greys' Japanese way of summoning the family.

They had not attempted to mow the orchard, nor the land running down toward the back road, out of sight, but all that showed from the street was gloriously shaven, and Rob had run the lawn-mower over it, enjoying its speed.

The supper was not merely pretty. "It was distinguished," Frances told her friends later; she had a feminine instinct for old china.

"But it was not merely distinguished—it was extinguished—they ate every crumb," Rob retorted. "And so it must have been good."

It was good; even in a community of skilful housewives, Mrs. Grey's cooking was famous. The dishes were tucked away in a big wash-tub till morning—an indulgence the Greys sometimes allowed themselves—and "the little busy B's bee," as the name was now abbreviated, ended with the girls nestled together on the steps, while the boys disposed of their length of limb lower down, and they sang again while the little July moon dipped down before them, and disappeared in the west, and the stars came out.

Then Frances arose to go, and the Rutherford boys arose, too, to take her safely home, and then go their own ways.

"We're no end grateful to you for giving us the very nicest party we ever went to," said Basil to Mrs. Grey as he bade her good-night.

"Oh, as to that," Rob remarked, "one good cut deserves another."

"Come as often as you like, my dears; we shall love to have you," said Mrs. Grey, who, on this second, longer seeing, had taken the Rutherfords quite into her motherly heart.

"Did you have a good time, children?" she asked as the girls kissed her good-night, Oswyth last of all, as she always contrived to be.

"Beautiful, Mardy," said Wythie. "I really think, as Basil said, it was as nice a party as I ever went to."

"And I think they are glorious boys," said Prue. "I'm so glad we've found such nice new friends."

"So am I; it's as fortunate for the three lassies as it is for the three lads," said Mrs. Grey.

"And I am glad the grass is cut, you unpractical little girls, Mardy, Wythie, and Prudy, all three of you," said Rob, looking out with much satisfaction on the smooth lawn as she pulled down the shade and lighted her bedtime candle.

CHAPTER THREE
ITS MASTER

The morning after the bee Oswyth was washing dishes and Prue was wiping them, while Roberta polished the stove, whistling in cheerful oblivion of the large polka-dot of blacking adorning her cheek.

Mrs. Grey came in from the dining-room, which she had been brushing up, her dust-pan in one hand, her whisk-broom in the other, held straight out like parentheses, and said, without preliminary, out of her busy thoughts: "I don't see, dear girls, what we shall do this fall unless we have an extra hundred dollars. And still less do I see where we are to get even an extra five dollars. I have been lying awake nights contriving, but no suggestion comes. The coal money went to repair the roof, and bought the flour and other things—all necessities—but it must be made up, and I cannot see how. Besides, you need, each of you, warm coats this winter. I suppose Prue can wear Wythie's old one, but Wythie and Rob must have something."

Prue made a wry face, but Rob cried: "Sufficient to the season is the coating thereof, Mardy. Winter coats don't appeal to me strongly this sultry morning."

"Don't worry, Mardy; I am sure we can manage," said Wythie, lovingly. "But coal—well, I don't see how that can be dodged."

"No, nor paid for," sighed her mother. "Ah, well! We have lived for a good many years, and through several crises which in prospective looked impenetrable, so I suppose we shall find a way."

"Like Sentimental Tommy," added Rob. "I'm sure of it."

"Perhaps papa will get into business by that time," suggested Prue.

"And throw up the invention?" cried Rob, quickly. "That would be foolish!"

"I wish I could do something to help," said Oswyth, sadly. "I wonder if I ought not to go in town this fall, even if I could only get a place in a store."

"And earn but six dollars a week, out of which you would have to pay your board? We have gone over that many times, dearie, and decided you are more useful here, even if I could allow a young girl like you to go alone into a city boarding-house," said her mother. "You are such a help to me, daughter, that I could not spare you, and you must frame your wish another way."

Oswyth looked pensively at her dimpled hands as she held them up over the dish-pan and let the water drip off of each of her ten fingers.

"I am going to do something perfectly original right here in Fayre; it is going to bring us money, and be a triumph of several sorts. I have no idea what it will be, but that's my plan," announced Rob. And as her family laughed at a "plan" so very loosely constructed, she waved her brush dramatically for further elucidation, and upset the saucer of blacking, spattering its contents broadcast over the spotless, though worn, oil-cloth covering the floor.

"Now, that's just like you, Rob," said Prue, severely. "You're more likely to do mischief with your schemes than to help much."

"That is hardly kind or true, Prudy," said her mother. "Rob's schemes usually come to something practically helpful. She's a daring girl, but not a rash one. Never mind, Rob dear; the blacking will easily wipe up. I shouldn't be at all surprised if you hit on a way to get us into a land flowing with milk and honey some day. But you are only sixteen now, and we must find a way to keep us alive in the desert while you finish growing up."

A long shadow fell across the door, and the four feminine members of the family looked up to greet its head with a smile. Clad in dark blue serge that hung loosely on his thin frame, Mr. Grey stood surveying the group, smiling back, but not entering. He was tall, handsome, his eyes dark and dreamy, yet with an eager expression in them, as if they had vainly sought that on which they could never rest. He was startlingly pale, except for a bright red spot high on each hollow cheek. Roberta more closely resembled him than either of the other girls, but in expression her rippling, alert brilliancy was wholly unlike the far-off, vague look of the father she worshipped.

"Oh, Patergrey," cried Roberta, springing to meet him, forgetful of her recent disaster and blackened hands, and giving him the caressing title—pronounced as one word—which she had long ago conferred upon him. "Where have you been 'one morning, oh, so early, my beloved, my beloved?'" Rob ended in the refrain of a song she loved.

"I went to the post-office, and I stopped at Mrs. Bonell's—she waylaid me," said Mr. Grey.

"You're keeping back something!" cried Rob, holding up her forefinger in a reproach that would have been more impressive if the forefinger had been whiter.

"He has a basket behind him," cried Prue, darting upon him. "What's in the basket, papa?"

"'Ware, Prue! Marked: Fragile. Don't handle," teased her father, holding Prue off with one hand. "Mrs. Bonell is going away."

"Where? For long?" asked Mrs. Grey, as Wythie exclaimed: "Oh, I am sorry."

"To Europe, for many months," said Mr. Grey. "And I've told her we would take a boarder."

"A boarder! Why, Sylvester!" cried his wife.

"I really thought you would like this one," said Mr. Grey. "It seemed very hard to say no. You see Mrs. Bonell said there was no one else in whom she would feel sufficient confidence to intrust this boarder to them, and when such a pretty young creature as she is flatters a weak man so, how can he resist? She says she knows we would never fail to the very end of his life to take care of him. She feels sure we are not the cruel sort of folk who would go away and leave him to shift for himself, nor put him out in the cold on winter nights when he had been in the warm house all day, and if he were sick that we would nurse him lovingly, and if he were suffering and past recovery we would chloroform him still more lovingly—in short, that we were ideal guardians of a cat. So I felt obliged to accept a rôle nature had evidently designed us to fill."

"A cat! Oh, bless you!" cried three rapturous girl voices, and Wythie added: "It isn't her lovely, white little Billee?"

"We have only seven cats taking their meals here now," suggested Mrs. Grey.

"My dear, those are humble dependents; of those I hope we shall always have a store, for I want the little grey house to be the asylum for homeless creatures it was in my mother's day," said Mr. Grey, busying himself with the basket-strap. "But a cat, all our own, and one of the family, we have lacked since the day when poor old Nellie Grey went to the reward of cats of blameless character. Yes, Oswyth; this is, indeed, snow-white Billy, and I consider it a great honor that his mistress will intrust us with her pet." Mr. Grey had unfastened the strap by this time, and, lifting the basket-cover, displayed a half-grown kitten, snowy white and odorous of violet sachet, cowering, trembling, with dilated eyes, on the pale blue knitted shawl with which his loving mistress had tried to soften his departure.

"Now, don't jump at him," said Mr. Grey, who understood and loved all animals. "Remember, a cat is the most nervous creature on earth, and this one is dreadfully frightened."

"I've often petted him at Mrs. Bonell's; he may remember me," said Oswyth. "Let me take him." Very gently she raised the downy creature, who immediately put his forepaws around her neck and clung to her, his poor little heart thumping wildly against Wythie's throat. "Dear Billy, you gentle, sweet, little kitten," Wythie murmured, sitting down to rock him, while Rob and Prue looked on longingly.

"You don't object, Lady Grey?" said Mr. Grey. "He's so much of a pet already, and so very white, he can't bother you."

"Why, you know, Sylvester, I'm quite as much of a goose about pets as the children—or as you are," laughed Mrs. Grey, and so Billy was adopted.

"I'd like to call him Kiku—that's Japanese for chrysanthemum. I wonder if Mrs. Bonell would mind? It would be so lovely to say: 'O Kiku-san,' when we called him," said Rob.

"She would never mind," said Prue, while Wythie began to sing to the old lullaby tune of Greenville: "O Billy-san, O Kiku-Billy-san; O Kiku-san, O Kiku-Billy-san." As she rocked to and fro in perfect content, frightened, puzzled little Billy shut his eyes and clung to her, his heart beating less tumultuously as he began to realize that here, too, were gentle hearts and hands.

"I want you when you can come, Rob, my son," said Mr. Grey, going toward the room which had been set apart for his special uses. It was a well-worn, but well-wearing, joke between Roberta and her father that she was his son Rob, his mainstay and dependence. "And I'd like to be able to see you when you come," he added, as a parting shot. "Just now you are in partial eclipse from blacking."

Rob laughed and ran upstairs. Presently she returned, and went to her father's room, carefully closing the door behind her.

It was a curious place, a mixture of study, library, workshop, and laboratory. It had been built for the kitchen of the little grey house when it was new, a hundred years ago. Its walls were wainscoted to half their height in panels of grained and varnished wood. The fireplace was made of narrow panels, with little cupboards above the high, narrow, wooden mantelpiece, and the handles of these cupboard-doors were tiny brass knobs. The old rush-bottomed chairs sitting around the walls, and the tables as well, were littered with papers. Between the windows, where the light was strongest, sat a common kitchen table, and on it stood a model of the bricquette machine, and models of its component parts. Two tall bookcases, one filled with scientific and mechanical books, the other with novels, essays, and poetry, stood opposite these models, and across the room on another table standing close to the sink and small portable stove, were scattered chemical apparatus.

Rob was perfectly at home in these queer surroundings; among them she had spent a great deal of her childhood, creeping, "mousy-quiet," to sit on a stool by her oblivious father, her chattering tongue silenced and her busy brain full of loving awe.

Her father looked up now as she entered. "Ah, Rob, come in," he said. "I want to go over this with you. You read to me what I have written here, while I move the model according to those directions, and see if I have made it clear and correct."

"Yes, Patergrey," said Rob, taking the closely written manuscript which he handed her, well used to this sort of service. And then she began to read.

Sometimes, not fully understanding what she read, Rob paused and watched her father manipulate the model, and refer to its sections, until she comprehended perfectly what the words were intended to convey. So far from this interest on her part annoying the inventor, it delighted him, and largely explained what was unquestionably true—that Rob was his favorite daughter.

"You will be as well able to exhibit this as I shall when it is done, Rob, my son," Mr. Grey laughed, well pleased, as, her point cleared up, Roberta read on, pausing only at a word from her father. "Wait a moment, Rob; this isn't quite right." "Mark that with the blue pencil, Rob; I'll say that more briefly." "Slowly, Rob; my fingers won't move as fast as your tongue."

At last they were through, and Mr. Grey threw himself into his big chair with the shabby cushions, sighing contentedly.

"That's all right, Rob," he said. "Next autumn will see the machine completed—December at the latest, I hope. What a help you are, Rob, my son!"

"It's a comfort to hear you say that, like a sort of grace, every time we get through, Patergrey," said Rob. "But if I am a help to you, I wonder if I can get you to do something for me?"

"Yes, you know you can," said Mr. Grey, anticipating a request to be taken fishing, or to go for a long stroll in the twilight. But Rob, who would never allow anyone to insinuate that her father could accomplish more than he did, had other plans in her teeming brain. With a sensitive flush, fearing to wound her father, she said:

"Didn't you tell me, Patergrey, that a magazine had asked you to write a special article for it on something or other scientific, and offered you quite a sum of money if you'd do it?"

"Why, yes," said Mr. Grey, startled into animation by the unexpected question. "On fuels and means of heating and lighting in the future, and the world's storage of such fuel; they thought I should be prepared for such an article—as I am. Yes, they asked me—why?"

"Because dear Mardy is worried over present prospects; she lies awake planning, and can't see her way out—she told us so this morning," said Rob, bravely. "She says we must have an extra hundred dollars—and she has no idea where it can come from. We've used up the coal money—you know she divides her poor little pennies into piles for different things—and if we get coal late it will cost more, besides, how can we get it later any better than now? So I never said a word to the rest, but I thought of the article, and I made up my mind I'd get the dear daddy to put a wee bit of his cleverness on paper, and surprise the blessed Lady Grey by giving her her hundred—do you suppose it could be as much as that, Patergrey?"

"They offered me a hundred dollars for three thousand words," said her father, adding quickly, as Rob clapped her hands rapturously: "But it will take my mind off the invention, Rob, and I don't want to delay that a day. Something seems to impel me—compel me is better—to finish it as soon as I can, and anything that retards it is a mistake, my dear."

"But you are all prepared—you said so, Patergrey—and you are so clever you can do it in a week," coaxed Rob, getting up to kneel beside her father, and crinkling her flexible face into a maze of irresistible puckers, as if he were a little child.

Her father laughed. "A week, you silly puss! Three days, at the outside," he said.

Rob cried out triumphantly: "Then you can't say no! Only three days! It can't make much difference with the machine, and isn't it worth three days' delay to relieve Mardy darling's mind? Poor Mardy! She's so brave and cheerful, but, oh, she does have to squeeze hard to keep us all fed and housed."

To Rob's distress her father dropped his head on his arms, laid over the back of the chair, and groaned.

"You're right, Roberta. It makes me sick at heart to think of what it has cost her to be so faithfully, patiently loving with me all these years. Poor, bright, pretty Mary Winslow, who might have shone in any setting! Yes, child, I'll do the article—set about it to-day. I know I make life hard for her, but I do my best. Some day you'll all see, Rob, I did my best."

Tears were raining down Roberta's cheeks. "Papa, Patergrey, I know, I know all about it! Why do you say that to me?" she cried. "And Mardy doesn't have a hard time—she'd never forgive me if I let you say that! She loves you so much that it would have been cruel to have given her all the world, without you."

"How can you understand that, Roberta?" asked her father, startled by the girl's insight.

"Because anyone feels that way when they love someone," replied Rob. "Wouldn't I rather be Roberta Grey, your daughter, than the richest girl in the world with another father? Don't grieve, Patergrey. It's all right for all the Greys, and we'll show all those people who talk and don't know what they're talking about, we'll show them—you and I and the bricquette machine—some day, won't we?"

"I hope so, Rob, I hope so," said her father. "But I can't help wondering, little daughter. I sometimes feel as though I were losing my hold. But, yes; we will prove ourselves right, Rob, my son," he added, straightening himself, the red spot burning under his glowing eyes. "And in the meantime you shall have the article this week, Rob. Tell your mother not to worry; my article on fuel shall give us ours. Tell her you woke me up to my duty."

"I'll tell her nothing about it, Patergrey," said Rob. "You shall hand her the hundred dollars and surprise her when it comes. And don't say I woke you up to your duty. It makes me sound perfectly horrid, and feel worse than I sound. Now I must go help get dinner. Thank you, Patergrey." And Rob kissed her father, and slipped away, glad to have succeeded, yet with the vague pain at her heart which of late she often carried with her from one of these pleasant mornings with the dear, pathetic father.

CHAPTER FOUR
ITS RELATIVES

Although Fayre was a small Connecticut town not two hours away from New York, the Greys followed the simple country practice of dining at mid-day. It was much pleasanter, when the mistress of the house and its daughters constituted also its service, for them to be able to draw a long breath when the forenoon's labors were over, and feel that nothing more onerous and damaging to gowns than preparations for tea lay before them. The last dish had been put away, and the delicate towels hung out in the sunshine to dry. Most human lots have their compensations, and Mrs. Grey found the remembrance of her sweet, fine dish-cloths consolatory to her amid the hardships of household drudgery.

Rob's brief depression in parting from her father that morning had passed away. Rob's heart had not been fashioned to sink under weight; she refused to believe in trouble until it forced itself upon her, and then she still refused to salute it by its proper name. Now the girls and their mother had dropped into chairs around the dining-room table, and were enjoying that most restful stolen rest, to which one has no right at that particular moment. No one in the family was quite presentable if anyone should come, and it was already two o'clock; they all felt that they had no right to linger there, still they lingered. Yet what they called their "uniform" was pretty and becoming. Each sister wore a plain, dark blue gingham, straight-hemmed skirt and blouse waist, with a deep sailor collar, feather-stitched in white, as were the cuffs. The collars opened low, and were tied with a narrow white-linen knotted tie, and the fresh young faces and white throats rose from the dark cotton, looking prettier than usual for the plainness of their setting. The duplicates of these gowns hung, fresh and newly ironed, upstairs; it was the Greys' working regalia, "the badge of their labor union," Rob said. The warmth of the day, and of getting and clearing away dinner, had made every one of Rob's unruly locks stray out over neck and brow, and curl up at their ends. She sat with her elbows on the table, her face in her hands, and Prue sat in precisely the same position opposite her, both enjoying the unconventional pose, as they did loitering in their working dresses when the old dining-room clock had struck two. Oswyth leaned back in her chair, her small, slippered feet thrust out before her, one arm dangling over the chair-back. Mrs. Grey rocked cosily by the window on the breeze side, and white Kiku-san, who was beginning to adjust himself to his new home, though he still approached strange objects with body elongated and with many nervous backward starts, sat now with his head on one side, watching the shadows on the floor of the swaying tendrils of the honeysuckle around the window.

"Oh, my heart, the Angel!" exclaimed Rob, suddenly, in panic-stricken tones. They all looked up. Across the newly shorn grass approached a figure, not very tall, but exceedingly awesome, and the Greys knew that they were caught.

"Aunt Azraella!" murmured Wythie, uncrossing and drawing in her feet, and bringing her arm to the front to join its mate.

With some incomprehensible notion of endowing her daughter with a celestial name Aunt Azraella's mother, the late Mrs. Brown, had christened her by a feminine form, of her own invention, of the name of the dread angel of death. Prue had once caustically suggested that it must have been because Mrs. Brown had foreseen "that she was going to turn out so deadly." There were a great many hard points about the Greys' life, but if any one of them was asked suddenly which was her greatest trial she would probably have answered unhesitatingly: "Living so near Aunt Azraella."

The girls speculated privately on what she could have been in her youth to have made their mother's brother—the Uncle Horace whom they did not remember—marry her. She was one of those persons born with a sure conviction of their fitness and mission to set the world right. She oversaw the Greys' expenditures, commented unfavorably on their methods of economy, condemned severely almost all their pleasures as extravagant, was wholly intolerant of what she called "Sylvester Grey's shiftlessness," and was thoroughly convinced that she could bring up three girls far more strictly, and far better than her sister-in-law—and as to the first half of her proposition she was doubtless correct. Yet she was not an ill-intentioned woman—Rob said that was the worst of it, "because if she meant to be horrid you could bid her to go to"—and in her peculiar way she really admired and was fond of her late husband's sister.

"I wonder what we've done now," said Rob, out of her past experience, and taking a rapid mental survey of events since her aunt had visited them, in a vain attempt to discover a peg on which she could hang blame.

Mrs. Winslow appeared in the doorway before anyone could reply, revealing herself portly, with a nose that dented in at the tip sharply on each side above its widespread nostrils; the hair, eyes, and skin of this estimable lady were of a uniform drabness.

"Good-afternoon," she said, entering. "Do you mean to say you aren't dressed? It's quarter—no, seventeen minutes after two! I make it a point to have myself and my house in perfect order every day at half-past one—Elvira understands that I demand that of her."

"We can't get our girls to grasp the idea, aunt," said Rob, a remark her mother hastily covered by saying: "It was so pleasant here we loitered, yielding weakly to temptation, Azraella. Take this chair; there's a refreshing little breeze at this window."

"What's that? Not a new cat! Now, Mary, how can you be so indulgent to these girls? Don't you know it costs something to feed animals? It may not be much, but you must often give them scraps you could use. It's just in those small leakages that your management fails—they keep you poor," said Aunt Azraella, sinking into the rocking-chair and removing her severe garden-hat.

"We have a third of a cow, you know, aunt," said Rob, gravely, "and none of us likes milk. We get more than three quarts a day, so it leaves us enough for charity. And there are crumbs that fall from a poor man's table as well as from a rich one's, Aunt Azraella. They're smaller, and not such fat crumbs, but our loving and grateful friends take them in the spirit in which they're given."

"They ought to go to the chickens," said Mrs. Winslow.

"Our arrangement with Mr. Flinders in regard to the chickens was that he was to feed them, and we provide only the space for them—and grasshoppers in summer," added Mrs. Grey, with a smile. "We have all the eggs we need, but not nearly as many as he keeps for his own use. I think this little white kitten won't impoverish us."

"You had a party yesterday, I noticed," said Aunt Azraella, dropping the subject of pets and pouncing on the one which she had come over especially to discuss, in what Rob felt was rather like a feline way of pouncing on a mouse.

"Yes. Did you see what a pleasant one it was?" asked Mrs. Grey. "We had a good time, and accomplished something besides."

"I saw three tall men here and a girl—I supposed it was the Silsby girl," said Aunt Azraella. "And I saw you had tea on the lawn."

"'The three men' were the three Rutherford lads—aren't they tall creatures?" laughed Mrs. Grey. "But they are only about six months older, each, than our girls. Such nice, kindly, well-bred lads they seem to be!"

"Where were you, Aunt Azraella? Why didn't you come in? We didn't see you," said Rob, with apparent innocence.

"I was at home, too busy to gad," said her aunt. "I got a few late currants, Mary, and I put them up—they made nine glasses of jelly. I was short this year. You did not see me, Roberta, because I was not in sight. I have no time to waste. But I saw you had a party, and I made out the tea on your lawn with my field-glasses."

Rob had known this quite well before she was told, but she dearly loved to extract the information for the benefit of the others each time that their aunt came to reproach them for misdeeds which she had discovered by a method of which she seemed never to be ashamed, but which filled the Grey girls with wrath or amusement, according to their mood at the moment.

Now Prue choked, and Oswyth's lips twitched, but Roberta looked Aunt Azraella straight in the eyes, her own brilliant dark ones blankly quiet.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, as if enlightened. "Jelly-glasses and field-glasses, currants with an a, and currents with an e—currant jelly and current news! Didn't we look pretty, aunt? We had out lots of the old china and pewter."

This was pure malice on Rob's part, for Mrs. Winslow coveted the Winslow heirlooms, to which as a childless widow, Winslow but by marriage, she had no claim.

Mrs. Grey glanced at her second daughter. "If some of us don't make ourselves presentable we shall be caught in our uniforms by someone whom we mind seeing more than we do aunty, children," she said. "Suppose we take turns in dressing, and Rob and Prue go first?"

Roberta arose. "Shall I wear my bridle, Mardy?" she inquired. "Not very hard to see through, the Lady Grey, is she?" she added to her younger sister when they were in the hall.

"I really don't see, Mary, I do not see, how, situated as you are, you can reconcile it with your conscience to give lawn-parties," said Aunt Azraella, severely. "These girls ought to understand that they cannot expect the sort of youth they would have if their father were other than he is. They ought to help you; not waste money in entertaining."

"Azraella, Azraella," cried Mrs. Grey, stung to impatience by this double thrust at her husband and her children. "You really should acquire the habit of learning facts before you form opinions. No girls were ever more cheerfully helpful and ready to do without the good times other girls have than mine are. Roberta tried—dear child, she is always trying something desperate—to cut the overgrown grass, since we had no man to do it. She borrowed your lawn-mower for it, but the grass was too long to use it. The Rutherford boys volunteered to the rescue, and mowed all this great lawn. What you took for an extravagant lawn-party was in reality a mowing-bee.

"I hope Roberta did not ruin my lawn-mower; I had no idea she wanted it for that tough grass, or I would never have lent it—she ought to have known better," said Aunt Azraella, shifting her attack.

"We didn't hurt it at all, aunt; we tried it, and when it wouldn't work we gave up at once," said Oswyth, beginning to tremble. She never could vent her wrath in lingual fireworks, as Rob did, and was sorely torn by the necessity of bottling it up. Now she longed to say that they would have been glad if their aunt had lent her burly Aaron, who was a great friend to the Grey girls, and would have come willingly, to cut the grass, but even Rob would hardly have ventured this.

"I need someone to help Elvira," said Mrs. Winslow, going off on a tangent—she had "irruptions of the brain," Rob said. "I have been thinking that I would take one of your girls, Mary. I would give her twelve dollars a month, and she could come home every night, and it would be time enough if she got up on the hill by half-past eight each morning. It would give you a little extra income. Prue would answer, if you can't spare Oswyth—I won't have Roberta."

Before Mrs. Grey could reply Oswyth sprang up, her face dark red to her hair, and saying in a choking voice, "Excuse me, mother; I must dress," ran upstairs without waiting for a dismissal.

"Goodness, Wythie, what is it now?" cried Rob, as her sister flung open the chamber-door with a bang. "You look mad."

"Mad? Mad?" echoed gentle Wythie. "I'm furious! Don't you go back there, either of you. She's more maddening than ever. She wants me or Prue for a servant to help Elvira—she won't have Rob."

"Why, I don't believe she will," drawled Rob, with a flash of her bright eyes. "Yet I would be good for her; a discipline, not unlike a scourge."

Prue thrust her head through the door between her room and the girls' chamber. She could not raise it because she was combing her fly-away locks over her face, forward from the neck, having heard that this treatment made the hair more fluffy. From the golden veil in which this enveloped her she spoke: "Wants me for a servant to help Elvira? Did you say that, Wythie? What did Mardy say?"

"I didn't wait to hear—I didn't dare. I felt as though I should have apoplexy," said Wythie. "She had been saying things before that."

"She's always saying things—and seeing things," remarked Rob. "The worst of the little grey house is that it stands where the hill-house overlooks it."

Prue, inarticulate for a moment from the indignity offered the pretty self which she did not underestimate, found her voice. "Well, let her wait till she gets me," she said, in a tone so sarcastic as to make up for the feebleness of the retort.

"We've made a 'sloka' since we came upstairs—Prue and I," said Rob. "We are going to sing it when Aunt Azraella gets too unbearable; it's better to sing things about her than to preserve your rage, as she does her sharp currants."

"I'm afraid it isn't very nice," said Wythie, doubtfully.

"Yes, it is; it's a lovely 'sloka.' Of course, you can't be sure it's nice till you've heard it. Just listen." And Rob sang softly:

"There is a queer person in Fayre,
Who trails fury and wrath everywhere;
She's a dragon-like breath,
So they named her for death,
And when she comes calling: Beware!
We love our dear Aunt Azraella,
For she lectures us—every Grey feller!
And she spies with her glass
What does not come to pass,
While our feelings we scarcely dare tell her."

Wythie could not help laughing, and felt better for it.

"Now, you and Prue, sit under the tree where you can warn Mardy if anyone comes to see her. I'm going for a stroll," announced Rob, and before Wythie could object she had disappeared without wasting time on the empty ceremonial of donning a hat.

Straight through the old orchard she went, climbed the fence, and took her course down the back road. She had a definite end in view. Three-quarters of a mile away lived a second cousin of her father, a blind woman, whom the Greys had from their childhood called "Cousin Peace," though her name was Charlotte.

Often, when life and herself got too tumultuous for Rob, she ran down for a breath of Cousin Peace's atmosphere. She saw the pale, calm face she sought at the window as she drew near the house, and, opening the gate, she went up and leaned on the sill without speaking.

Miss Charlotte Grey's thin right hand went out to touch her head. "Ah, Roberta dear, how are you to-day?" she said, as she felt the soft tendrils of curls which she had never seen.

"Pretty horrid, thank you, Cousin Peace," said Rob, penitently, "but very well."

"Anything wrong?" asked "Cousin Peace."

"Nothing new, nothing much, and everything," said Rob, with Delphic ambiguity. "We're not any richer, and Mardy's been worried, but we've found some nice new boy friends. Still, Aunt Azraella's there this afternoon, rather more trying than ordinarily—she even made Wythie furiously mad. So you can see whether good or bad prevails."

"Your Aunt Azraella must not prevail—to anger you, dearie," said Cousin Peace, gently. "She is one of those unfortunate souls that can't see any difference in size between her mountains and her mole-hills. She always reminds me of the old fable of the astronomer who had a fly in his telescope, and thought a new world had rolled into space in the field his glass swept. It is quite as bad as being totally blind to lack perspective, I sometimes think, Robin. If you once grasp the fact that only essentials are essential, dear, you will have mastered the secret of good and happy living. And your Aunt Azraella is not essential," she added, with a merry twist of her lips, as she turned her closed eyes toward Rob, and laughed so blithely that it was evident that she did not want to preach, and that all Rob's visits to her distant cousin were not serious ones.

"She is certainly not essential to my happiness, dear, peaceful cousin," said Rob. "You haven't heard the Iliad of How the Grass Was Cut. Let me relate it." And, seating herself on the upper step, just outside the window, Rob began to tell in her most dramatic manner the story of their new acquaintances and how they had befriended the Greys. As she listened Miss Charlotte's pale face flushed with laughing, and she grew so much younger that it was perfectly clear that Rob not only received, but gave in these visits to the blind woman.

When she arose to go Miss Grey held out both hands and kissed Rob, who had to hold aside the syringa bushes growing unchecked before the window, in order to reach her cousin.

"Dear Robin, come soon again; you do me as much good as your blithe feathered namesake," said Cousin Peace, holding the strong, brown hands a moment between her white ones.

"I'll come; you couldn't keep me away, Cousin Peace," said Rob. "You do me more good than an organ and a stained-glass window, and they help me to feel angelic more than anything I know. Oh, why aren't all relations like you?"