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Title: An Everyday Girl

A Story

Author: Amy E. Blanchard

Illustrator: Frank T. Merrill

Release Date: March 12, 2018 [EBook #56725]

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

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AN EVERYDAY GIRL

BOOKS BY

AMY E. BLANCHARD

IN THE GIRLS’ BOOKSHELF

A GIRL OF ’76. A Story of the Early Period of the War for Independence. 331 pages.

ELIZABETH, BETSY AND BESS. A Story. 284 pages.

ELIZABETH, BETSY AND BESS—SCHOOLMATES. A Story. 308 pages.

THE CAMP FIRE GIRLS OF BRIGHTWOOD. A Story of How They Kindled Their Fire and Kept It Burning. 309 pages.

FAGOTS AND FLAMES. A Story of Winter Camp Fires. 306 pages.

IN CAMP WITH THE MUSKODAY CAMP FIRE GIRLS. A Story of Summer Camp Fires by Cabin and Lake. 310 pages.

A GIRL SCOUT OF RED ROSE TROOP. A Story for Girl Scouts. 320 pages.

A LITTLE MAID OF PICARDY. Story of a Little Refugee in France. 338 pages.

LUCKY PENNY OF THISTLE TROOP. A Girl Scout Story. 320 pages.

FROM TENDERFOOT TO GOLDEN EAGLET. A Girl Scout Story. 317 pages.

Each illustrated by Colored Frontispiece and with Colored Jacket. Cloth Bound.

Also Books in the AMERICAN GIRL SERIES.

An Everyday Girl

A STORY

By AMY E. BLANCHARD

ILLUSTRATED BY

FRANK T. MERRILL

W. A. WILDE COMPANY

BOSTON CHICAGO

Copyrighted, 1924,

BY W. A. WILDE COMPANY

All rights reserved

AN EVERYDAY GIRL

Made in the U. S. A.

CONTENTS

I.

A FAMILY DISCUSSION

II.

ELLEN BEGINS TO BE USEFUL

III.

VIOLINS AND DOVES

IV.

CALLERS

V.

SCHOOL DAYS

VI.

A BIRTHDAY PARTY

VII.

GETTING OUT OF DIFFICULTIES

VIII.

ONCE MORE

IX.

STUDIO DOINGS

X.

BRIGHT DAYS AND DARK ONES

XI.

THE VIOLIN

XII.

A DULL WINTER

XIII.

A SPRING VISITOR

XIV.

WHERE THE SUMMER WAS SPENT

XV.

THE HAUNTED HOUSE

XVI.

THE BRIDGE

XVII.

AN UNEXPECTED MEETING

XVIII.

A NIGHT OF ADVENTURE

XIX.

AN INHERITANCE

XX.

FIDDLE AND I

An Everyday Girl

CHAPTER I

A FAMILY DISCUSSION

Ellen settled herself on the most uncomfortable chair in the room for the simple reason that it was the only one left her, the others being occupied by her elders, relatives of various sorts. She pulled down her skimpy black skirt over the length of rusty-looking stockings which covered her long legs, and gave herself up to a survey of the articles in the room. There were so many little gimcracks that Ellen considered she could entertain herself by looking at them while the others talked and talked. She was not interested in the conversation at first, but suddenly she withdrew her gaze from a group of wax flowers and fruit under glass, and sat up very straight. They were talking about her!

“Being a bachelor whose housekeeper would leave if a child were foisted upon her care, I couldn’t consider taking her, housekeepers not growing upon every bush these days,” said Mr. Josiah Crump, a bald-headed pot-bellied old gentleman.

Ellen pictured a bush with housekeepers dangling from it, and wondered what such might be called.

But this fancy left her when Mr. Crump continued, “I always liked Rosanne and haven’t a thing against her daughter, but I never cared much for that artist husband.”

“Gerald North was a dear, a perfect dear,” spoke up pretty Mrs. Lauretta Barton; “I always liked him and so did Bobby.”

“No business sense; impractical,” Mr. Crump differed with her. “No man has any right to go off to war and get killed, leaving his family unprovided for; it makes it very awkward for them, and furnishes an unpleasant subject for the relatives to contemplate. I don’t believe in having unpleasant subjects brought up when they might be avoided.”

“I don’t like unpleasant subjects myself,” sighed Mrs. Barton, “but they have to be faced when they are thrust upon you. I wish I could advise, or, indeed, assume the responsibility of the child myself, but in my delicate state of health it would be impossible; it would be entirely too great a task.”

“Delicate fiddlesticks!” broke in Miss Orinda Crump. “What you need, Lauretta, is some vital interest to take you out of yourself.”

“If only Bobby were living,” murmured Mrs. Barton.

“Which he isn’t,” pursued Miss Orinda, “and it doesn’t do you any good to brood over your loss, or to magnify every little ache and pain; you’ll end in a sanitarium.”

“But I do suffer; you don’t know,” complained Mrs. Barton plaintively.

“From lack of exercise, rich food, and nothing to think of but your own self,” continued Miss Orinda. “If you had to hustle for your bread and butter, and turned your thoughts out instead of in, you’d find life more interesting; but when your hardest exercise is cutting off coupons, and your chief interest is in germs, vitamines, and X-rays, what can you expect? As I see it, it’s up to you to adopt Ellen. Don’t you think so, Uncle Jo?”

“H’m, well, each must be his own judge in such matters,” replied Mr. Crump, leaning back in his chair and placing the tips of his fingers together. “I believe in freedom of thought, in——”

“Oh, do shut up, Jo,” said his sister, Mrs. Ed. Shirley, a stout, comfortable, well-dressed woman. “Once you get off on one of your harangues there will be no stopping you. Of course every one knows that, with my big family, I couldn’t be expected to take the girl. It is as much as I can do to manage my own brood, so count me out, Orinda.”

“I don’t see why you all constitute me chairman of this meeting,” retorted Miss Orinda. “If age has any prerogative, it isn’t up to me to preside.”

“Well, it’s your house, and you got us here,” returned Mrs. Shirley.

“To read you the letters from Dr. Markham and Mr. Barstow, that you might understand how imperative it is that Ellen should be provided for at once. You all have your own cars, so it was no effort for you to get here.”

“What is the matter with her Uncle Leonard? Why isn’t he here? He is nearer of kin than we are, and has no children,” Mrs. Shirley went on.

“He has sea duty for two years, and I don’t know where he is.”

“Well, there’s his wife.”

“She is with her people in California. She will stay till he gets back, and anyway——”

“Where are her father’s people? Why don’t they come forward?” Mr. Crump again came into the conversation.

“His parents are dead, and he was an only child. If he had any near relatives, we do not know where they are.”

“Humph! I understand. Well, as far as I can see we’d better put the girl in some good institution; there are plenty of them. What with taxes and the high cost of living it isn’t up to any of us to increase our expenses.”

Ellen smothered a little cry of dismay and clenched her hands. An institution! She choked back her tears. She must be brave. She must not let them see.

There was a moment’s complete silence. Mr. Crump sat with his hands clasped over his ample front, his eyes fixed on the ceiling, and an expression which said, “The oracle has spoken.” Mrs. Shirley looked across with a satisfied smile at Mrs. Barton, who lifted her hands and let them fall helplessly into her lap, intimating that there was nothing further to be said. Miss Orinda alone looked at Ellen, who sat with downcast eyes, clenched hands, and a heaving breast.

It was but for a moment that Miss Orinda regarded the girl; then she sprang to her feet. “Rosanne’s child shall not go to an institution!” she cried. “Take off your things, Ellen. You are going to live with me, and pray Heaven you will make a capable, useful woman.”

Ellen’s mute misery changed to an expression of intense relief. “Oh!” she breathed tremblingly.

“Well, that’s good of you, Rindy,” declared Mr. Crump, rising from his chair, “though, after all, you are the best fixed to give the girl a home. You live alone, own your own house, have a garden, and in this little place living can’t be as high as in the city.”

Orinda tossed her head and looked at him scornfully from under half-closed eyelids. She gave a little bitter laugh. “Of course,” she replied.

“Well, Susan,” said Mr. Crump, turning to his sister, “we may as well be getting on; it’s right smart of a ride, you know. Good luck to you, Rindy. Good-by, little girl. You’ve got a good home, and I hope you’ll appreciate it.”

Ellen answered never a word, but stood in silence till all went out, Mrs. Barton drawing her handsome furs about her as she entered her shining car. She nodded and smiled her farewells as the car bowled off, following the less elegant one of Mr. Crump. Miss Orinda did not stop to watch them out of sight, but shut the door hard, came back into the parlor, and stood for a moment in front of the Latrobe stove which heated the greater part of the small house.

“Well, that’s that,” she said at last. “If any one had told me this morning—— But, never mind. Maybe I’m a fool, but I’d rather be some kinds of a fool than a hide-bound, self-indulgent, cold-blooded skinflint. I rather imagine there have been worse fools in this room lately than I am. Come here, Ellen, and let’s take stock of each other, since we’re to be housemates.”

Ellen came readily. Miss Orinda held her off at arm’s length and regarded her steadily. “You’re not much like the Crumps,” she said presently. “You get your hazel eyes from your mother, but your nose and mouth from the Norths. It’s just as well, for the Crumps aren’t much for looks usually.”

“Uncle Josiah isn’t,” said Ellen in a decided voice.

Miss Orinda smiled. “No, he’d never take a beauty prize, neither would Susan. Lauretta wasn’t a particularly pretty girl; she grew up to her looks somehow; and you may, too, for you haven’t a bad beginning, though no one could call you a prize beauty either. Lauretta is about my age, a little older in fact, but doesn’t look it. If I gaumed up my skin with creams and clays, and was forever fiddling with my hair, maybe I’d look younger, but life’s too short for me to spend it messing with my old carcass, and I haven’t an eye out for the men, so there you are.”

While she was speaking Ellen was taking in her own impressions. She didn’t guess her cousin’s age; she was about forty-five, but looked older, for she used no devices for increasing her charms. She wore her dark hair straight back from her forehead, which was too high for beauty; she had somewhat small, but clear, frank gray eyes, a large nose, a straight, thin-lipped mouth, long upper lip, decided chin, was of medium height, slender, and straight. Her good points were her finely-shaped head, well set, her figure, her perfect teeth, and clear, unblemished skin. Ellen had seen the gray eyes snap and the lips compress into a hard, decided line, and concluded that some might not find it easy to get along with Cousin Orinda Crump.

But then she had delivered her from that terror which had threatened,—life in a charitable institution. Tears gushed to Ellen’s eyes as she thought of this, for she was an emotional, sensitive little body. She gave a short gasping sob. “I want to kiss you,” she faltered.

Miss Orinda patted her on the shoulder. “There, there, child,” she soothed, as Ellen put her arms around this deliverer from an unhappy fate. “I’m not much of a hugger, not having had anything but a cat to hug for a good many years, but if it would do you any good to kiss me, go ahead and do it, only it isn’t to become a daily habit, I warn you. We’ll get along all right if you’re a good child. You’ll turn out to be a real smart girl, I have no doubt, but I must warn you right this minute that you can’t expect either fine clothes or luxuries from me. We shall manage to get along somehow, I dare say, but I shall expect you to do your part.”

“Oh, I will, I will, Cousin Orinda,” promised Ellen after giving the other a much less ardent kiss than she desired to bestow.

“Everybody in this town calls me Rindy Crump, and maybe you’d better call me Cousin Rindy. What name did you go by at home?”

“Mother always called me Ellen, but Daddy often called me Nelly or Nell.”

“Ellen it shall be; that’s a nice sensible name. Now then, Ellen, bring your bag up-stairs, and we’ll get your room ready. We’ll send for your trunk to-morrow.”

Up one flight of steps they went to a plain little room furnished with a bureau, a washstand, a small white iron bedstead, and two chairs, but there was an attempt at decoration, such as advertising calendars and Christmas cards tacked on the walls, and on the bureau a very hard pincushion. The mantel held two ornate glass vases and a small bisque figure of a kneeling Samuel. The small house contained but six rooms; this one was next to Miss Rindy’s; above was an attic. All was neat and orderly.

“Now wash your face and hands,—the bathroom is at the back,—put on an apron, and come down so I can show you about setting the table,” said Miss Rindy; “then you can help me get supper.” She closed the door and went out.

Ellen stood still for a moment and looked around. This was her home! Her lip trembled, her eyes filled. She dropped on her knees by the side of the bed and gave way to a fit of weeping. It was all so different from the home she had left, a dainty, artistic one. But she must be thankful for this one; she was. Her tears were half in regret for the things which were lost to her forever, half in thankfulness for that which was now provided.

However, it was not like Ellen to remain long in the depths. She was a courageous little soul, and the past few weeks had been desperate enough to show her that the ills we have sometimes can be so bad as to make us grateful for a chance to try out those we know not of; moreover, there was a call from below. She sprang to her feet, bathed her face and hands, and went down. If Miss Rindy noticed the traces of tears she made no comment.

“Haven’t you an apron?” she asked.

“I believe I have in my trunk,” answered Ellen doubtfully.

“Well, here, put on this one of mine,” said Miss Rindy, taking one down from a peg behind the door. “Aprons are most useful members of society, they cover a multitude of sins; they ought by rights to be called charities instead of aprons.”

The apron hung far below the hem of Ellen’s dress, but that didn’t matter, as Miss Rindy remarked. “It’s the fashion now to have floppy do-dabs switching about below the edge of a skirt,” she said. “Not that I hold to such silly styles. I thought Lauretta’s dress too silly and fussy for words. Come along, Ellen, I’ll show you where the dishes are. I don’t use tablecloths; mats are much less trouble and more economical. They are in that table drawer.”

Ellen found them and laid them as directed; then the rest of the table was set and she viewed it approvingly. She liked the antique mahogany with the old blue-and-white china upon it, but still there was something missing. “Don’t you have flowers on the table?” she inquired. “We always did.”

“You did? Well, I don’t; I can’t be bothered with them.”

Ellen was silent for a moment before she asked, “Would you mind if I bothered with them?”

“Dear me, I don’t know where you’d find any. I don’t raise them; they’re like Lauretta, pretty but useless. But, pshaw! I don’t see what’s got into me, picking on Lauretta, though she always did rub me the wrong way.”

“Maybe I could find something,” persisted Ellen.

“You’re welcome to,” returned Miss Rindy from the pantry where she had gone.

Ellen opened the kitchen door and looked out. It wasn’t very promising. A few green tomatoes still hung on the vines, a scraggy apple tree bore several apples at the top, and there was a row of cabbages left in a patch at the back. None of these offered anything like a bouquet.

Ellen went down the brick walk to investigate farther, and presently discovered that a honeysuckle vine, which had strayed from the neighboring yard and hung over the fence, ventured to display a few late blossoming sprays of which Ellen took immediate possession. While doing this she observed that there was an open lot bordering on the property. It was easy to reach by climbing the low fence. An open lot always presented all sorts of possibilities, and this one, while somewhat disappointing, offered a sparse supply of blooms which Ellen was quick to gather,—two or three crimson clover-heads, a cluster of purple asters, yarrow more plentiful, and two belated buttercups. With the honeysuckle these would do very well, and when at the last several frost-touched leaves of woodbine added more color, Ellen returned well pleased.

She ran into the kitchen. “Look, Cousin Rindy, look!” she cried.

Miss Rindy turned from her task of grating cheese. “Well, I declare,” she exclaimed. “They’re nothing but useless weeds, but they’re right pretty after all. You can get a tumbler out of the pantry to put them in.”

Ellen set her bouquet proudly in the center of the table on which Miss Rindy already had deposited a plate of warmed-over rolls, a dish of stewed apples, some plain gingerbread, and the grated cheese. There was a glass of milk for Ellen, tea for herself.

It was a simple meal, but there was enough of it, and Ellen rose from the table satisfied. She helped her cousin with the dishes, and then they sat down together in the parlor. The light from the big kerosene lamp picked out the gleam of the two or three ornately bound books on the marble-topped table, discovered the gilt frames of “A Yard of Roses” and the big chromo where woodeny waves threatened to engulf a tin-like ship.

“Now we’ll talk,” announced Miss Rindy, settling herself in a heavy haircloth-covered rocking-chair. “You will have to be provided with some work to do, Ellen. You can’t sit all the evening just holding your hands in that useless way. I don’t suppose you have anything just now, but you can hold this worsted for me and meantime tell me all about yourself. Of course I know in a general way, but I want more information, if you are going to live with me. You can tell me what you choose, and I will read between the lines.”

CHAPTER II

ELLEN BEGINS TO BE USEFUL

Ellen fixed her eyes on the ruddy isinglass in the doors of the Latrobe. Certain discolorations gave to her fancy strange pictures,—a glowing sunset behind a line of trees, a burning lake beneath a cloudy sky. She wondered if Cousin Rindy ever had noticed them, but she did not ask, for her thoughts went galloping off to the little studio apartment in a big city, her home till three months ago. Now it was stripped of all its furnishings, occupied by strangers, and Ellen would know it no more.

“Go on,” encouraged Miss Rindy after a short silence. “You needn’t tell me where you were born; I know that, and I know when your parents left you. What I want to know is how you lived and all that. You went to school, of course.”

“Oh, yes, I went to school, and I studied music and French at home. Mother and Father generally spoke it at meals. Even when I was quite small I could chatter away rather glibly, for they wouldn’t let me have things at table unless I asked for them in French.”

“Much good it will do you here. I don’t suppose there are two persons in town who know a word of it, unless maybe Jeremy Todd; the Todds live next door.”

“But you were in France and must speak it.”

“A smattering, merely a smattering. I picked up a little, naturally, but most of my dealings were with our own boys, and I had enough to do without studying French grammar. Did your mother do her own work? How big was your flat?”

“Only three rooms besides the bath. The studio and two rooms were all we needed. Mother got breakfast on a little gas stove; we had just any sort of lunch, and went out to dinner, sometimes to one place, sometimes to another; that was while Father lived. It was fun to decide which restaurant we could afford to go to. If Dad was flush, we’d go to a swell place; if he wasn’t, we’d go to a cheap cafeteria, but we didn’t mind. Often we’d have a late supper. Some of our artist friends would call up and say they were going to bring some specially nice thing from the delicatessen; then Mother would make coffee, and it would be awfully jolly.”

“Humph!” Miss Rindy grunted. “What did you do when you were not at school?”

“Oh, I just knocked around, practised, of course. Sometimes I sat for Dad when he had an illustration to make, and often I washed his brushes. Often, too, we’d all go out to some exhibition or a musicale. I loved the musicales. Mother had a lovely voice, you know; she sang in a church choir, and sometimes, after Dad went, she sang at private houses.”

“You still kept the studio while your father was in France, and after he came back?”

“Yes, for he was always hoping to get back to work, but he couldn’t, though he tried. You see it was shell-shock, and he was gassed, too.”

“I know, I know,” Miss Rindy breathed. “Poor boys, poor boys, how many I have seen suffer. You kept right on in the studio then while your mother lived.”

“Yes, for she couldn’t bear to give it up; we had all been so happy there, but at last the money gave out and everything had to go. I hated to see Dad’s pictures go for so little, and Mother’s piano, too, but it had to be. I think it was the grief and shock and all that which wore Mother out. The doctor said she had no resistance, and when she took a heavy cold and had pneumonia she hadn’t the strength to fight against it.” Ellen tried to choke back her sobs.

“Don’t let’s talk about it,” said Miss Rindy herself, feeling an emotion she did not want to show, but she laid aside her knitting and patted Ellen’s hand furtively. “Just tell me where you went after all that happened.”

“First to one and then to another, but artists aren’t usually very well off, though they do manage to have such jolly times. They were all just as kind and generous as could be, especially Mr. Barstow, one of Dad’s best friends. He had a long talk with me before he sailed for Europe, and said I was not to worry, that he would hunt up some of my relatives, for it was only right that they should know I was—homeless.”

“He was quite right,” said Miss Rindy, again picking up her knitting. “I was fond of your mother, and I should be ashamed to have her daughter dependent upon strangers. You don’t have to call yourself homeless any more, you understand, for here you are, and here you be as long as I have a roof over me and a crust to share. I own this house and I have a little income. It will be close cutting, but we sha’n’t starve, I reckon. As for clothes, they don’t take as much stuff as they used to, that’s one comfort. You’re how old, Ellen?”

“I am just fifteen.”

“Well, you’re not very big, and won’t need trains even when you are grown up, so I reckon we won’t have to lay out much on dry-goods. I must start you to school first thing, and between school hours you can be learning useful things. Can you sew?”

“A little; I used to help Mother sometimes.”

“That’s something. Can you cook?”

“I can make toast, and cocoa, and fudge.”

“Cake?”

“No, we bought cake when we wanted it. We had no real stove, you know.”

“To be sure. Funny way of living, but never mind, you’re never too old to learn, and we’ll begin next Saturday on gingerbread. What about clothes? Have you enough to last a while?”

“Ye-es, I think so; not many black things, and I want to wear black.”

“So you shall, for a while anyhow. What isn’t black can be dyed.”

“But dyeing is expensive, isn’t it?”

“You don’t suppose for one minute that I’d send anything to a dyer’s when you can get a package of dye for ten cents? No, sir. When I want coloring done I do it myself.”

“Oh!”

“Yes, ‘Oh!’ I imagine you didn’t know that things could be dyed at home.”

“Yes, I do know, for lots of the women artists do it when they want draperies or costumes and such things. Mother never did because there was always so much else to do, and because it wouldn’t have been convenient.”

“We’ll unpack your trunk to-morrow and then we can tell what can be dyed. You can help me with the stirring and rinsing. What about your mother’s things?”

“They are in a trunk Mrs. Austin is keeping for me. Mrs. Austin was one of our good friends.”

“Better send for the trunk. No doubt there will be many things in it that you can make use of.”

“Oh, but—Mother’s things!” The tears rushed to Ellen’s eyes. “I—I couldn’t.”

“There, child, there. No doubt you feel that way now, but in a little while you will love to wear them; you’ll feel that she would like you to, and it will bring her nearer.”

“Do you—do you really think so?”

“Yes, I do. It may be hard at first, but you mustn’t be over-sentimental; it doesn’t do for poor folks like us, and you can’t afford to hoard away anything that will be of practical use to you. We will attend to your trunk first; meantime send for the other.”

So as soon as Ellen’s trunk arrived Miss Rindy applied herself to the task of going over its contents. Most of the pretty, gay little dresses, with a faded coat, were laid aside for dyeing, and the colored stockings put with them.

“These tan shoes can be made black easily,” decided Miss Rindy; “so can that light felt hat. I can reshape the hat over a bowl or a tin bucket. Let me see those gloves. I can dye the cotton ones, but I’m not so sure that I’d better undertake the kid; we’ll see about that later. Can you knit, Ellen?”

“Yes, when it’s straight going.”

“Then this evening you can rip up that yellow sweater. I’ll tie the worsted in hanks and dye it black, then I’ll show you how to knit it over and you’ll have a good sweater for school. Do the dresses all fit you?”

“Some of them I’ve outgrown; both those blue serges are too small.”

“Then we’ll rip them up, dye them together, and make a good dress of them that will last you as long as you need to wear black. Give me that piece of blue ribbon; it will do to go around your hat when it’s dyed. There now! I don’t see but you’re all fixed up, or will be when we get everything ready.”

Ellen was quite overcome by these suggestions of her exceedingly resourceful cousin. “You’re a perfect wonder, Cousin Rindy,” she said.

“Well, I never was placed in the bric-à-brac class, pretty but useless, and I hope you’ll not be.”

“I’ll never be the first,” returned Ellen with a smile, “and I don’t want to be the second.”

“It’s up to you,” returned Miss Rindy. “We’ll start on these things to-morrow, Ellen. If it should suddenly turn cold, you’ll need the coat and hat. Those stockings you have on are disgracefully faded, such a dirty green as they are. Haven’t you any other black ones?”

“I have a couple of pairs, but they are soiled and need mending.”

“Then get them out. Here, pile all those things on one chair. Don’t leave them scattered around till your room looks like a second-hand clothing shop. First thing to do is to wash out those stockings, and, while they are drying, you can run down to the drug store and get the dye. This evening the stockings will be dry and you can darn them. If you are to start to school on Monday, your wardrobe must be in some sort of shape.”

Under her cousin’s directions Ellen soon had the stockings washed and hung out; then she started forth to get the dye. “But, you know, I haven’t an idea where the store is,” she remarked as she paused at the door.

“You can’t miss it or anything else in this place,” Miss Rindy answered. “Just follow your nose and it will take you anywhere you want. Walk straight down the street till you come to the church, the white one, not the gray. It is just opposite the store, and the store is opposite the church; it’s the post-office, too. You can’t miss it. Now, run along.”

Ellen started off to make her first venture into the one long street of the drowsy old town. It was early November, and a mat of red and gold leaves covered the boardwalk, for the street was not paved. Houses, set rather far apart, stood each side the street. Most had gardens in front where a few late chrysanthemums and scarlet salvia brightened the borders. Some more thrifty households had vegetable plats in which long, dry blades rustled from shorn cornstalks, and purple cabbages squatted in rows farther along. The air was full of the tang of fallen leaves, of apples, wind-fallen, rotting on the ground. Once in a while, from some kitchen where pickling was going on, spicy odors were borne.

As Ellen entered the general store she noticed that it held a conglomeration of all sorts of goods. The drugs were on a row of shelves at the farther end of a long counter, neighboring the piles of gingham, flannelettes, and such dry-goods. Next came canned articles and groceries. These led the way to hardware, which followed shoes. At the extreme end of the store was the post-office. The middle of the store was occupied by such vegetables and fruits as were in season. In the glass cases were notions, candies, and stationery. The loft up-stairs was given up to crockery and house furnishings.

Ellen stood just inside the door for a moment and looked around. She had never seen just such a place in her life, and wondered how on earth the proprietors managed to keep track of such a mixed stock. There was no one in the store, but presently a voice from behind the post-office box called out, “I’ll be there in just a minute,” and before long a slim, dark-eyed little woman appeared. “He’s gone to the city,” she explained, “and I’m kind of short-handed, for the boy has gone out with the orders. What was it you wanted?”

“I want some black dye.”

“Who’s it for?”

“Miss Orinda Crump.”

“Oh, Rindy Crump. What’s she going to dye?”

“Several things.”

“Silk, cotton, wool, or mixed goods?”

“Why, all kinds, I think.”

“Then I’d better give you a package for each, and if she doesn’t need all, she can return what she doesn’t use. Kin of hers?”

“I’m her cousin.”

“Making her a visit?”

“Why, ye-es. I’m going to live with her.”

“You are? I did hear somebody say last night that a power of Rindy’s kinfolks came down yesterday. You don’t mean—— But never mind, I won’t ask any more questions. Rindy can tell me all about it. What did you say your name was?”

Ellen hadn’t said, but she gave the desired information.

“You don’t favor the Crumps,” continued Mrs. Perry; “none of them have red hair.”

“I’m like my father,” replied Ellen, tossing back her shining, copper-colored locks.

“He was a painter by trade, wasn’t he?”

“An artist.”

“Same thing. Did he do signs or houses?”

“Neither. He painted beautiful pictures.”

“Not much money in that, I reckon. He’d better have stuck to the houses. Painters get good wages these days. Well, Ellen, come again. I suppose you’ll be running down for the mail every evening. It’ll be nice for Rindy to have somebody to go on her errands.”

Ellen picked up her package and stalked out, her face aflame and rage in her heart. The red and yellow leaves made no appeal to her. She saw no gay chrysanthemums on her way back. She shut the door savagely as she entered the house, threw the package on the table, and tossed her hat on a chair. Then she walked out to the kitchen where Miss Rindy was.

“Well,” said her cousin, “did you get it?”

“Yes, Cousin Rindy, I did,” Ellen responded. “That horrid woman said you’d probably want all the kinds there are. If you didn’t need them all, you could return whichever package you didn’t want. She is the most inquisitive person I ever saw, and I just loathe her.”

“Whewee! What a pepper-jig you’re in. When you’ve known Maria Perry as long as I have you’ll find it isn’t worth while to get mad with her. She can ask questions, I’ll admit, but she doesn’t mean any harm by it. She’s the chief purveyor of news in the town, and everybody looks to her for it, just as if she were a headline on a newspaper.”

“She asked me if my father painted houses or signs. The idea of such a thing! When I told her he painted pictures, she impertinently said she reckoned there wasn’t much money in it.”

“There wasn’t was there?”

“Sometimes there was a great deal.”

“But it wasn’t what one might call a satisfying, steady income. Never you mind, Ellen, don’t look so much like a thundercloud. Go cool off, child. You’ll have to get used to being talked over; it’s the prerogative of the dwellers in a small place like this. A full description of you will be broadcast all over the town before night.”

“Would you call my hair very red?” asked Ellen anxiously.

“You don’t suppose it will be reported that it is black or gray, do you?”

“Daddy loved it, so did all the artists. They used to say it was real Titian color.”

“That may be, but I don’t reckon there are many of our neighbors who know anything about Titian, so you’ll have to get used to being called red-headed. Just keep your hair brushed and tidy-looking; that’s all you’ll have to do. It doesn’t matter about looks. I want you to be sensible and useful, Ellen.”

“Useful Ellen; that’s what Daddy used to call me sometimes when I brought him a piece of toast I had made, or a cup of tea,” said Ellen dreamily.

“Well, I hope you will carry on and always deserve the name.”

“Who are the next-door neighbors?” asked Ellen, changing the subject. “I saw an odd-looking little man who seemed a bit lame.”

“That was Jeremy Todd. He is a musician, plays the ’cello and gives lessons, besides being the organist at our church.”

“Oh, does he? How lovely! Mr. Barstow bought the dear old violin that Daddy played. I was beginning to play a little, too, but——” Ellen paused and drew a long sigh. “Are the dyes all right, Cousin Rindy?”

“Yes, quite right. We’ll start in to-morrow and get your things done.”

“Who lives on the other side of us, Cousin Rindy?”

“The Dove-Hales. The Craig-Hales live the other side of town.”

“I saw a darling little boy in there.”

“Billy? Yes, he is a dear. We all call him Dovey. Now put away your hat and coat and help me pare these apples. We’re going to have a Brown Betty for dinner.”

As Ellen turned to hang up her hat and coat she stopped to ask, “Is that woman always in the store?”

“Not always; she’s generally in the post-office,” Miss Rindy smiled, “and she won’t like it if you interrupt her when she’s getting dinner or about to sit down to supper.”

“But the post-office, isn’t it always expected that there will be some one there to wait on you?”

“It isn’t what you expect, it is what Maria thinks about it. Her affairs are much more important than the government’s. A batch of biscuits that might burn is more to be considered than all the letters you or I might write. But don’t let’s find fault with Maria; she has about all she can do to run her house, the post-office, and, often, the store. Mil Perry is a lazy lout and piles all he can upon her thin shoulders. It must be trying to have your biscuits burn up just because some one wants a penny post-card. Get your apron, Ellen, before you sit down.”

CHAPTER III

VIOLINS AND DOVES

Within the next two or three days Ellen made at least two or three friends. It was from over the fence on one side that Jeremy Todd first spoke to her, and over the fence on the other side that she made the acquaintance of Billy Dove-Hale.

She was gathering the last of the tomatoes which grew near the side toward the Todds; Miss Rindy had said they must be in before the frost nipped them. Ellen was singing softly a little song of Schumann’s, which had been a favorite of her mother’s, when suddenly a head appeared over the fence.

“Who is that singing ‘Moonlight’?” said a man’s voice.

Ellen looked up from where she was kneeling by a big basket into which she was emptying her last gleanings.

“What do you know about Schumann?” asked the man.

“My mother loved Schumann’s songs, so did my father, and so do I.”

“Who are your mother and father, and who are you, my child?”

“My father was Gerald North, the artist. He, and my mother, too, have left me alone on this earth. I am Ellen North, and I am making my home with Miss Rindy Crump. She is my cousin.”

“Yes, yes, I forgot; Bessie did tell me. It is a sort of revelation to find any one from Miss Crump’s singing Schumann. How do you like it here?”

“I—I—can’t tell exactly, not yet. It is a pretty little town and I love the mountains.” She waved her hand toward a distant line of purple. “Cousin Rindy was very, very good to let me come when I had nowhere to go, but—but it’s hard to get used to things that are so different from where I have lived, always in a studio, you know.”

“Somewhat different, one might judge,” returned the man, smiling quizzically. “I can understand that, having lived in a studio myself, away back in the days of my youth.”

Ellen sprang to her feet. “Oh, did you ever live in a studio?”

“Yes, years ago in Leipzig, where I was a student of music, I lived with an artist friend. Aye! aye! what good times we had! Germany then wasn’t what it is to-day.”

“Then you are a musician.”

“A would-be one. I am the organist at the little church here, give lessons to the few pupils I can get, play the ’cello and violin when I get a chance, and—there you are.”

“My father played the violin.”

“So?”

“Yes, he and my mother often played together, she at the piano and he with his violin. I used to love to hear them as I lay in bed. It was so pleasant to go to sleep with that lovely music in my ears.”

“I can believe it, yes, I can well believe it.”

“My mother had a beautiful voice. She sang in a big church and sometimes in private houses,” Ellen went on, wondering a little why she was so expansive.

“And you, did you make some music, too?”

“I began to learn the piano and the violin, but—now——”

“You have it with you, the father’s violin?” asked Mr. Todd eagerly.

Ellen shook her head. “No, it went with the piano and everything else.”

“Too bad, too bad,” Mr. Todd shook his shaggy gray head. “Perhaps—we’ll see. At any rate there is Schumann to talk about. You have the songs, maybe.”

“Those I still have; they are in my mother’s trunk which is to be sent to me here.”

“Good! Some day——”

But here a shrill voice interrupted: “Jeremy, Jeremy, where are you? Hanging over the fence dawdling away your time. I thought you were going to dig those turnips.”

“Yes, dear, I’ll do it right away,” answered the man’s gentle voice. He turned to Ellen, shaking his head. “Turnips and Schumann! Never mind, we will have another talk soon. Good-by—Ellen, did you say? I am glad you have come, child. We shall be good friends.” He went off, and Ellen noticed that he limped slightly.

Lugging the tomatoes, she went back to the house. “There is quite a lot,” she said, setting the basket down. “What do you think, Cousin Rindy, I have been talking to Mr. Todd. Isn’t he a dear?”

“Humph! Yes, there are more than I thought. I can fry some of the ripest ones for supper, and the rest will ripen along and last quite a while. So you have been talking to Jeremy, poor old Jeremy.”

“Is he so poor?”

“He’s not what you would call rich except in a beautiful optimism and a rare philosophy. Most persons would call him a disappointed man.”

“What disappointed him?”

“Well, he hadn’t much but talent to start with, talent for music. He was always an up-in-the-clouds sort of somebody, and when his father died he took the small amount that was left him and went abroad. He was getting along first rate, they said, when he met with an accident, had a terrible fall while he and a friend were taking a walking tour through Switzerland. It was a long time before he was able to be moved. His brother went over for him and brought him back, and he was in a hospital for a long time. It was there he met Bessie Stayman, who was one of the nurses. She owned the house next door, and finally brought him there; her mother was living then and needed her care. Well, the upshot of it was that she married Jeremy. Mind you she married him, made a dead set at him. She was getting on, and it was him or nobody. She made him believe—— Oh, well, we won’t go into that. At all events it gave him a home when he most needed it, and he didn’t find out right away what a spitfire she is. If she only sputtered it wouldn’t matter so much; I can stand sputtering better than whining. But he hasn’t an easy time of it, I’ll warrant. She orders him around like a slave driver, wants things done on the minute, no matter what. It doesn’t make any difference how he may be occupied, if she wants a thing done, drop his affairs he must to do her bidding, although it may be by no means important that he should. He must tend to fires, wash dishes, do any old thing. She won’t let him practice on his ’cello because she doesn’t like to hear it. So his only refuge is the church; he can always make the excuse that his duty is there, and can slip off when he can’t stand it any longer. But—well, I call him a disappointed man.”

“But he seemed so dear and cheerful.”

“He’s always that. He rises above conditions better than most.”

“He said we were sure to be friends.”

“You could have a worse one, but don’t let him lead you off into dreaming dreams that can’t come true. It is fortunate that I’ll be on hand to keep you down to solid earth if he happens to carry you too far up into the clouds.” Then, as if to punctuate her remarks, Miss Rindy bade her young cousin sit down to the task of darning stockings.

Having rolled up the last pair of stockings Ellen obeyed a call from her cousin. “Ellen, I wish you’d go out to the parsley bed and get me a few sprigs of parsley; I always like it in cream gravy.”

Glad of an escape into the fresh air Ellen skipped off. She wished the parsley bed were on the other side of the garden, that she might, perhaps, see Mr. Todd again, but it was in the part which bordered upon the Hale property. From the Hale house came the sound of a phonograph which was clashing out jazz music. Ellen smiled as she thought of the contrast between the two neighbors. She had not met any of the Hale family, had merely seen that Mrs. Hale was a pretty young woman who wore startling costumes and seemed always to be on the go.

In competition with the phonograph she heard the high, shrill voice of Lucilena, the maid of all work. Unmindful of the rival phonograph, Lucilena with great gusto announced that she was “climbing up Zion’s hill.”

The conflicting noises were not to Ellen’s taste, and she decided to make short work of gathering the parsley. But, just as she was turning to go, a small voice said, “Have you got a kitty?”

Ellen looked around to see where the voice came from, and discovered a pair of bright eyes peering through an opening in the hedge. “Why, no,” she replied, “I haven’t one, but my cousin, Miss Rindy Crump, has one.”

“Oh, I know that one; it’s a big old cat named Wipers. I want a wittle kitty.”

“I’m sorry I haven’t one to give you,” returned Ellen.

“Do you wike kitties?”

“Very much.”

“If you had a wittle one would you give it to me?”

“Why, I think so.”

“I wike dogs, too. I’m a dog sometimes, a wittle white dog and my name’s Goo-Goo.”

“That’s a funny name.”

“I fink it’s a nice name. My name is Billy Dove-Hale; Jeremy calls me Dovey.”

“You mean Mr. Jeremy Todd?”

Billy, having now withdrawn his head, was standing on tiptoe, looking over the hedge at Ellen. He ignored her question, instead asking one himself. “What’s your name?”

“Ellen North.”

“Ewen Norf,” repeated Billy. “Is you ever an angel?”

“Why, no.”

“I is sometimes, and my name is Sara Phim. I has wings and I can fly. Some day I is going up to heaven and get a wittle sister. I’d wather have one zan a dog. Daddy’s going to get me a dog some day. If you can find a wittle kitty will you bwing it to me?”

“I certainly will.”

“I wike you. I wish you wived here.”

“But I do live here, with Miss Rindy Crump.”

Just here came a summons from the house. Lucilena was calling: “You Billy, you Billy! Whar is yuh? I ’clar yuh is de mos’ git-out-o’-de-wayes chile uver I did see. Come in an’ git yo’ suppah fo’ I bus’es yo’ haid open.”

Without a word of farewell Billy galloped off, or rather took flight as he flapped his arms, wing fashion, in his own estimation. “I’se comin’. I’se flyin’ fas’ like an angel.”

Ellen could not determine whether it was the prospect of supper or Lucilena’s terrible threat which urged to promptness on Billy’s part, but she went smiling into the kitchen with her bunch of parsley. “Isn’t it funny,” she said, “that I’ve made two acquaintances to-day, one each side the garden?” And she told of her interview with Billy.

“He’s a funny little tyke,” declared Miss Rindy. “What with the notions he gets from Lucilena and the ones his own imagination supplies he is as full of fancies as an egg is of meat. He is left to Lucilena a great deal, for his mother is forever on the gad. A flyaway sort of somebody she is, sweet as honey and kind as can be, but no housekeeper. Everything goes by sixes and sevens in that house, meals at any time, feast one day, famine the next. I don’t see how Barry stands it, or Lucilena either, but they all get along as comfortably as a basket of puppies. It’s none of my business, though my fingers do itch sometimes to get at those rooms and put them in order. You’ll like Marietta Hale, you can’t help it, and I don’t know but I’d rather than not that she played the part of a fearful example to you.”

Ellen laughed. “Do you think I require that she should?”

Miss Rindy smiled in her queer one-sided way. “I can’t tell yet; you’re a new broom. Now, suppose you come here and see how I make this gravy, then look at the biscuits in the oven. There’s nothing I like better for supper than fried tomatoes and hot biscuits.”

Not long after supper the bell rang. Miss Rindy went to the door. “Why, Jeremy!” Ellen heard her exclaim. “What brought you here? Come right in. Glad to see you.”

Mr. Todd, with a violin under his arm, limped in.

Ellen looked up brightly. “Oh, Mr. Todd, isn’t this nice!” she cried. “You’ve brought your violin. Are you going to play for us?”

“Why, no, that isn’t exactly what I came for,” he explained. “I thought maybe you would like me to lend you this and permit me to help you with it once in a while.”

“But——” Ellen looked apprehensively at her cousin. “It’s very kind of you,” she went on hesitatingly.

“I don’t know that I approve of Ellen wasting her time with a fiddle,” objected Miss Rindy. “What good would it do her?”

“It would be perhaps a pleasure,” answered Mr. Todd gently.

“Fiddle-dee-dee! Pleasure, indeed! Ellen and I can’t afford useless pleasures. She will have her living to make, and it’s dollars to doughnuts she will never make it twanging a fiddle. Besides, I don’t know that I could stand hearing the thing squeaking out scales.”

Mr. Todd’s clear blue eyes met Ellen’s hazel ones. “Music might not be such a bad profession for her,” he said reflectively. “She may have a very good voice and—— Do you know anything at all about the piano, child? Have you ever had any lessons?” He turned to Ellen.

“Oh, yes, I studied with Mother.”

“Good! Then what about the organ, Rindy? She could practice in the church, I am sure, and who knows but some day she could take my place, unless, indeed, she could do better, which would not be a difficult matter.”

“Now that sounds sensible,” returned Miss Rindy with satisfaction. “I don’t want to stand in the child’s light when it comes to practical matters, but I don’t want her to waste her time, fritter away her youth in a perfectly useless way as so many young people do.”

“You don’t mean that she must be deprived of all enjoyment. ‘All work and no play’—you know the rest.”

“No doubt she will get play enough, but I don’t want her to be a mere toy, as the other part of the old saw suggests. You and she talk the organ matter over, and if it doesn’t interfere with her school or her duties at home I have no objection. What do you say, Ellen? Would you like to learn to play the organ?”

“I’d just love it!” cried the girl excitedly. “I love the violin, too, but if I can’t have both, which of course I can’t, I’d adore to play the organ, to learn all those lovely things from the old masters, Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, and all the rest.”

“Then consider yourself my pupil.” Mr. Todd’s face was wreathed with smiles. “We’ll have the first lesson—— Let me see—when can you spare her, Rindy?”

“Why——” Miss Rindy considered the question. “I suppose she could always have a half hour late in the afternoon when she has done her lessons for the next day, or on Saturdays.”

“But——” Ellen suddenly looked distressed. “I—I’ve no money, Mr. Todd.”

His usually gentle face took on a frowning expression. “The daughter of one of our soldiers, who gave his life for a noble cause, needs no money in exchange for the little I can give her. Permit me, my dear child, to offer this much in honor of your brave father. You understand, Rindy, that I shall consider it a high privilege, aside from the pleasure it will give me, to have such a pupil, for it is a red-letter day when I meet a kindred soul such as she is.”

A whimsical smile flickered around Miss Rindy’s mouth. “Very well, Jeremy, all I ask is that you don’t haul her too high up into the clouds with your sentimentality. The practical part is all right, and I appreciate it and your goodness. I hope Ellen will do her part and come up to your expectations.”

“There isn’t the least doubt in my mind but she will,” responded Mr. Todd as he rose to go.

“You may as well take your fiddle,” charged Miss Rindy.

Mr. Todd picked up the violin. “We needn’t discuss this with any one,—with—ah—Bessie, for instance.”

A mischievous gleam came into Miss Rindy’s gray eyes. “Certainly not. I wouldn’t think of discussing it with—Bessie, for instance.”

CHAPTER IV

CALLERS

The remainder of the week brought a string of visitors, for Mrs. Perry had not been slow in spreading the news of the new inmate of Miss Rindy Crump’s home, and all were curious to know what this young person might be like.

The morning after Mr. Todd’s call Marietta Hale came running in with a plate of hot rolls. “I just thought I’d bring these in myself,” she said. “Lucilena this minute took them out of the oven, and they’re piping hot. Barry wasn’t quite ready for breakfast. This your niece, Miss Rindy?”

“My cousin,” corrected Miss Rindy.

“Oh, yes, I remember Mrs. Perry did say cousin. I’m glad she’s come. Billy took such a fancy to her. He told me there was a ‘wovewy young wady’ next door; he has trouble with his l’s you know.” She smiled upon Ellen, who, in the grace of her girlish slimness, appealed to the plump Marietta just as she had appealed to Jeremy Todd. “Do run in often to see me,” Mrs. Hale added.

“You mean to see Billy; she wouldn’t be liable to find you at home,” remarked Miss Rindy with a twinkle.

“Now, Miss Rindy, you know I’m not always out,” protested Marietta laughing. She was always good-natured.

“Well, I don’t know the time when I’ve not met you either going or coming,” retorted Miss Rindy.

“Then that means you are out as often as I am,” declared Marietta triumphantly, and after this parting shot she announced that she must fly or Barry would be mad because she kept breakfast waiting; “though, goodness knows, he does it often enough himself,” she said as she went out.

“She’s rather a good sort, flibbertigibbet though she is,” admitted Miss Rindy. “She’s as generous as they make ’em, good-tempered, too. You never hear her pick people to pieces the way some do. You needn’t smile, Ellen; I know I do a good deal of criticising myself, but I try not to make it ill-natured. Besides I am analyzing the townsfolk for your benefit, so you may know what to expect. I suppose you’d find out for yourself in time, but forewarned is forearmed.”

The day was still young when Ellen discovered that she had not been forewarned in the case of Miss Sophia Garrett, who came in before the morning work was quite done. She was a lady of uncertain years but of no uncertain opinions. She prided herself upon being blunt and outspoken, avowing that she would speak the truth at any cost.

“Well, Rindy,” she began as she entered, “where’s the girl? I hear you have taken on a new responsibility. I hope you haven’t done anything rash, committed yourself so to speak. It is a serious undertaking to assume the care of a giddy young girl. Nobody can tell how she will turn out, and if she grows up to be a slattern or a light character, you will be censured for not bringing her up as you should.”

“Ellen may be young, but I don’t believe any one could charge her with being giddy,” Miss Rindy retorted.

“Well, you never can tell. A new broom sweeps clean. Are you going to train her as a servant or a lady? Is she bound out to you till she is eighteen? Somebody suggested that you had found her in an orphan asylum.”

“Then somebody spoke falsely.” Miss Rindy’s firm lips straightened to a hard line. “She is my cousin, and, being such, should not fail to be a lady. Come in, Ellen,” she invited as Ellen appeared at the door. “This is my young cousin, Ellen North, and Ellen, this is Miss Sophia Garrett, an old schoolmate of mine.”

Miss Garrett offered her hand and proceeded to look Ellen over with a critical eye. “Humph! she has red hair; that always means a high temper. It’s well she hasn’t the light eyebrows and eyelashes that generally go with red hair. She doesn’t look to be so very strong, but then maybe she’s one of the wiry kind. I like a bigger nose and a smaller mouth, myself.” Miss Garrett admired no features that did not resemble her own, no possessions which were unlike those she had. She was a short, chunky sort of person with thick arms and legs, big head, large nose, small mouth, and long chin. She had very large, prominent light blue eyes, and mouse-colored hair. She was distinctly the opposite of the type which Ellen had always been taught to admire, although she evidently was very much satisfied with herself.

After her survey of Ellen the questions began again. “Father and mother dead, did you say?” She turned to Miss Rindy.

“I didn’t say, but it is a fact,” returned Miss Rindy tartly.

“What did they die of? I hope it wasn’t consumption; it would be too bad if she brought the germs into this house.”

“It was not consumption. Cousin Gerald was gassed and suffered from shell-shock.”

“In the war, was he? Oh, yes. And the mother?”

“Died of pneumonia.”

“Dear me! Was that before or after the husband?”

“After.”

“Well, I must say I think it’s pretty hard on you.”

“I consider it is a privilege. Even if Ellen were not a relative I would be glad to be permitted to do my bit for the child of one of our own men. I saw enough when I was in France to appreciate all they went through. I certainly should be willing to share what I have with one of my own blood, setting aside the question of patriotism.”

“How old is the girl?” asked Miss Garrett, changing the subject back to Ellen herself.

“She is fifteen.”

“Small for her age, isn’t she? But there’s time for her to grow. Going to send her to school, I suppose.”

“Most certainly.”

During these interrogations Ellen was most unhappy. She looked pleadingly at her cousin, who understood and made the suggestion that she should go into the kitchen to see if the soup were boiling over; and the girl, grateful for a chance to escape, obeyed with alacrity, hearing, however, as she went out, that Miss Garrett had started a new topic.

“Speaking of schools,” Miss Sophia began, “did you hear about the new teacher? She went riding alone with a young man last Sunday afternoon when she should have been in Sunday school teaching a class and behaving herself.”

“Do you call that misbehaving?” was what Ellen heard her cousin ask.

Then she heard no more, for the soup was not boiling over, so she went down to the back lot in order to get away as far as possible. Later she saw Miss Garrett going down the street, so, returning, she found her cousin sitting with some sewing, the cat in her lap.

She smiled quizzically as Ellen entered. “Well, how did you like Miss Garrett?” she asked.

“I didn’t like her at all,” answered Ellen hotly.

“Of course you didn’t. I needn’t have asked the question. She is a gossipy old frump. She is so strait-laced it’s a wonder she doesn’t break in two. Virtuous? Oh, yes, she has all the Christian virtues except charity. I call her an article of bigotry and virtue, for she is narrow-minded to the last degree, and has no use for any one who doesn’t live up to her standards. She has not cottoned to me much since I came back from overseas, and I was rather surprised to see her this morning. She came only out of curiosity, of course, for she doesn’t love me.”

“I don’t see what she could have against you.” Ellen was ready to take up the cudgels.

“I gave a little talk before the Guild one day, and she has scarcely spoken to me since.”

“What could you have said to offend her?”

“Oh, I don’t know; she was offended on general principles. For one thing I said that self-esteem doesn’t like suggestion, gives suggestion but won’t take it; that the Kaiser was such an example of self-aggrandizement, vainglory, and hypocrisy that he might really do some good by showing the world how despicable those qualities are. Then she thought I was utterly lost when I told my audience that the men in the trenches considered cowardice, selfishness, niggardliness, and boastfulness were the cardinal sins, worse, well, than some other things.”

“Yes, I know; I’ve heard my father say that, too,” responded Ellen. “I think it was splendid for you to go over and help, Cousin Rindy.”

“Why shouldn’t I have gone? There was nothing to prevent. Nobody suffered by my going. It was a great experience, and I did help a little, whatever Sophia may think of it. The trouble with her is that she looms up so large in her foreground that others can be seen only around the edges of her personality; that never gets any one very far. Get down, Wipers; you’re in the way.”

“Why do you call him Wipers?” asked Ellen, picking up the big gray cat and cuddling him in her arms.

“That’s the way the boys pronounced Ypres, and it is in memory of war days. I wanted an original name and I have it, don’t you think?”

“I do, indeed. I like it better now that I know. Are there many others in town as gossipy and critical as Miss Garrett and Mrs. Perry?”

“No, as far as I know I should say that they head the list.”

“There is one thing to be thankful for, and that is our neighbors on both sides are as nice as can be.”

“You haven’t met Bessie Todd yet,” returned Miss Rindy grimly.

This was true, and Ellen appreciated the sly reference not long after when a great ki-yiing in the garden took her out to see what was going on. She discovered that Wipers had wreathed himself around the neck of Mrs. Todd’s little dog, Bunty. Wipers had borne much from Bunty, who, once too often, had intruded himself into Miss Crump’s premises, for the sole purpose of worrying his furry neighbor, and now was receiving entirely unexpected but well-deserved punishment.

Ellen rushed to the gap in the fence where the affray was going on and was confronted by a large, irate woman who screamed out: “Drive off your cat. The horrid, savage beast, to attack a harmless little dog like Bunty!”

“He’s been teasing the cat,” Ellen defended. “He’s been doing it for days.”

“But he’s never done the creature any harm.”

“Because Wipers was too smart for him; he would have done it fast enough if he’d been given a chance.”

“I wish he had. Let me catch that cat on my premises and I’ll let it know what boiling water feels like.”

“Oh, you wouldn’t be so cruel,” cried Ellen. “Would you like us to throw hot water on your dog when he comes in here? He does it every day, and has no business to.” Ellen’s dander was up.

“Who are you, miss, to give impudence, I’d like to know?” retorted the woman.

“I’m Ellen North, and I live at Miss Crump’s. Wipers has just as good a right to defend himself as your dog has.”

“Well, let him keep his own side the fence;” Mrs. Todd was cooling off a little.

“Exactly what he was doing when your dog chased him. The dog was the intruder, not Wipers.”

By this time Wipers had relinquished his hold upon the whimpering Bunty. Ellen picked him up and bore him back to the house, hearing Mrs. Todd’s angry tones growing fainter and fainter as she retreated to her own door.

With flushed cheeks and excited voice Ellen, almost in tears, gave her account of the fracas.

Miss Rindy listened attentively. “I like dogs, but I like cats, too, and better than any other dog or cat I like Wipers, so I’m glad he has put the fear of cats into Bunty’s cowardly little soul. I’ll warrant he’ll not venture into this yard again, not when Wipers is there. One lesson will be enough for him.”

“But Mrs. Todd said she would throw hot water on Wipers if he went in there again, and cats will prowl.”

“She won’t. She’s like her dog, her bark is worse than her bite. That’s Bessie Todd all over. You’d think she was going to tear you to pieces, and the next thing she’ll be handing you a plate of fried chicken over the fence. I haven’t been her neighbor all this while for nothing. It doesn’t do any good to bandy words with her. It’s best to wait till she gets over her pepper-jig before you say anything. The Irish will crop out when she gets mad.”

“Is she Irish?”

“Her mother was. We won’t carry on a feud, Ellen. You’ll see that her sputtering doesn’t amount to anything. Like as not the next time you see her she’ll be stroking Wipers and calling him a nice kitty. I know.”

The next Sunday Ellen discovered that her cousin was right, for the lady smiled and bowed most graciously as they all came out of church. Ellen was arrayed in her newly dyed garments and felt very respectable. The black was very becoming to her fair skin and rippling tawny hair. Miss Rindy was evidently proud of her, introducing her right and left as, “My little girl, Ellen North.” When they walked up the street with the Todds, Ellen fell behind with Jeremy while Mrs. Todd chatted away vivaciously with Miss Rindy, the two appearing to be on the best of terms.

“You noticed that I played ‘Warum’ for the offertory this morning,” said Mr. Todd to his companion.

“Oh, I did notice, and I could scarcely keep back the tears. ‘Why? Why?’ it kept saying to me, and I wondered why trouble and grief must come.”

“I know, I know, but you must not be unhappy, little Ellen. A good man has said: ‘It is not by change of circumstances, but by fitting our spirits to the circumstances in which God has placed us, that we can be reconciled to life and duty.’ And another says that trouble ‘brings for us, if we will accept it, the boon of fortitude, patience, self-control, wisdom, sympathy, faith.’ Those are big things to gain, Ellen,—big things.”

Ellen smiled rather wistfully. “I’ll try to remember,” she replied.

CHAPTER V

SCHOOL DAYS

Four walls enclosing countless eyes which were fixed upon her critically, was the impression which Ellen received on Monday morning when she entered the schoolroom. Miss Hawley, her prospective teacher, was one of those who had called during the week. Ellen wondered if she would seem less awesome upon further acquaintance, for she was dignified, tall, handsome, and unapproachable. Next to Ellen on one side sat Carolyn Rowe, a nice wholesome-looking girl with wide-open blue eyes and a winning smile. On the other side sat Florence Ives, who was constantly fluffing up her bobbed hair, which stood out like a bush around her rather large head. Florence had a simpering expression, an affected lisp, and a way of drooping and half closing her eyes to make them appear dreamy. She was much made up, and was continually but furtively powdering her nose or looking at herself in the small mirror she kept within her desk.

In glancing around the room Ellen decided that she would like Carolyn better than any of the other girls, and she hoped the girl would take a fancy to her. So at recess she was glad to meet Carolyn’s advances with more graciousness than she exhibited toward the others, though most of these appeared disposed to be friendly.

Ellen soon discovered that Carolyn was not possessed of much imagination, but was a conscientious, plodding student with great respect for the attainments of others.

“I’ll never be brilliant,” she confided to Ellen, “though I do hope I won’t turn out to be an utter idiot. What are your favorite studies, Ellen?”

“Music and French,” Ellen answered promptly.

“Oh!” Carolyn looked surprised. “I must say that I’ve never aspired to be a musician. I hate to practise. I began lessons on the piano, but I was so unhappy over them that Father said it was foolish for me to keep on. I might like French if there were a chance to study it, but who in the world would teach me? It isn’t taught in this school. I’m afraid you’ll have to give it up, Ellen.”

“I don’t believe I need to. I have quite a number of French books, and I can keep on reading those, even if I have no one to talk to. It isn’t a bad plan to read aloud so as not to lose the accent.”

“Can you really read it?”

“Why, yes, not so very fluently, but I manage pretty well with a dictionary.”

“How smart you are. You could read aloud to me, couldn’t you?”

“But you wouldn’t understand it.”

“That wouldn’t matter. I’d like the sound.”

Ellen laughed. “You are very good to want to listen to my halting accents.”

“Bring one of your books to school to-morrow and read to me at recess, or, better still, come over to my house. Oh, no; I must call on you first, because you are the stranger here; then when you return the call you can bring the book and read to me. We can go into Dad’s office; he’s a doctor, you know, and when he is out making his visits we can have the office all to ourselves. I almost always study in there for it is nice and quiet and nobody disturbs me. What are you going to do about your music? Miss Rindy hasn’t a piano, has she?”

“I am going to take lessons from Mr. Todd on the organ. I can practise at the church, he says.”

“Really? Can you play at all?”

“Not on the organ, but on the piano. I used to play duets with my mother. We loved the old masters, Beethoven and Mozart and those. We studied some of their symphonies.”

“That highbrow stuff? Oh, dear, I’d never fall for that. Jazz is about all I can appreciate.”

“What do you like best to study?”

“I don’t like to study at all, not really, but if I’ve got to, I want to do my best and get somewhere. I wouldn’t disappoint Father and Mother for the world, particularly Father. He takes such pride in my reports when they’re good.” She did not explain that they were seldom anything else.

Here Florence Ives came up with her most insinuating lisp. “I wath jutht wondering what you two were talking about,” she began.

“We were talking about studying,” Carolyn told her. “Just think, Flo, Ellen can read French. This is Ellen North, you know.”

“Yes, I know.” Florence gave Ellen a nod of recognition. “How pairfectly wonderful that she readth French. I wish I could. Thome day maybe I’ll learn. Mamma wanth me to go to Parith to finish. They thay one can learn a language better where they thpeak it all the time; ith much the eathietht way. I never mean to thudy any harder than I can help. Jutht enough to let me thlip through. Can’t you take a walk with me thith afternoon, Caro? We might meet thome boys who’d join uth. Thereth a real handthome new boy at Fuller’th.”

“Well, let him stay there,” retorted Caro. “I don’t want to see him. I’ve got my algebra to tackle anyway, so count me out.”

“You old greathy grind! What do you want to do that for? What ith an algebra problem more or leth? Have all the fun you can get and let the old algebra go, I thay.”

“No, sir, duty first and pleasure after. If you must go boy hunting, find some better companion. There are plenty of others. Me for the unknown quantities.”

“Ithn’t she an old thoberthideth?” exclaimed Florence. “You come, Ellen.”

“No, I have my practising to do and then my lessons.”

“What a pair of old thtick-in-the-mudth,” declared Florence walking away in disgust, leaving Ellen more drawn to Caro than ever.

“She’s such a silly child,” commented Caro. “Now I like fun just as well as anybody, but I never did see any in running after boys. Lots of the girls do it, I know, but I think they make themselves perfectly ridiculous giggling and making eyes at every boy they meet.”

“Don’t you like boys?”

“Yes, well enough, but not in that silly way, certainly not enough to run after them. Do you like them, Ellen?”

“Why, yes, I think so. I’ve never known very many. Living in a studio as we did, there wasn’t much chance of meeting them. Father and Mother entertained only the grown-up artists and musicians, and they were always such fun that I didn’t miss younger company. If I had gone to an art school I suppose I might have met dozens.”

“Think of you living in a studio. How wonderful!” Caro looked at her companion as if she were a being from another world, which in a certain sense she was.

From this hour Carolyn was Ellen’s devoted admirer. Ellen’s past experiences fascinated her. She was a creature of romance, one quite outside the usual humdrum person of every day, who had lived in a mysterious world of her own, who had gone through tragic experiences, and was, as Caro declared, “just like a heroine in a book.” Every now and then some new chapter was opened over which Caro gloated, and this sympathy and interest meant much to Ellen, although Caro was not a congenial companion in all directions.

Very often the two studied together in Dr. Rowe’s office, Ellen’s brighter mind getting at results more quickly than Caro’s duller one; yet Caro’s knowledge stuck by her, and many a time she was able to supply a reference or rule which Ellen had forgotten. Once in a while she would insist that Ellen read French to her, which Ellen, amused, would do, wondering how Caro could enjoy it when not one word did she understand. She insisted, however, that she liked the sound. The fact of the matter was that she so adored Ellen it was enough for her to hear her voice. Moreover, it gave her an excuse to keep her adored one longer with her.

So the days went on. To the dingy old schoolhouse, set back in a bare yard, Ellen took her way each morning. It was situated midway between the two ends of the quiet little town. About it clustered such buildings as Perry’s store, another small one kept by Miss Malvina Sparks, a bakery and ice-cream saloon, the two churches, and the one hotel, dignified by the name of the Mansion House. Along the front of this almost any hour of the day was seen a row of men in tipped back chairs, drummers waiting for their train, idlers passing away the time in political gossip, or tourists obliged to stop over while their cars were being repaired. Beyond the hotel were the blacksmith’s shop and a garage, and beyond these the houses began again, stretching as far north as the big factory of Sylvester Ives, and, after a vacant space, houses again, continuing as far north at this end of the town as they did south on the other, and gradually standing farther and farther apart till their surroundings became farm lands.

Carolyn’s devotion to Ellen soon became a live topic with the schoolgirls. “Caro hath an awful cruth on that red-headed Ellen North,” Florence was wont to say jealously. “There ithn’t a day that she doethn’t bring her thomething. To-day it wath fudge, and yethterday it wath caketh.”

“Perhaps she thinks she doesn’t get enough to eat at Miss Rindy’s,” suggested Marcia Sloane maliciously.

“Oh, March, I don’t think it is nice for you to say that,” objected Sally Cooper. “Every one knows that Miss Rindy isn’t rich, but she belongs to one of the best families.”

“Well, no one would guess it from the way she dresses that airish Ellen,” retorted Marcia.

“I don’t think she is a bit airish,” protested Sally; “she is just artistic. I know plenty of persons who admire her.”

“I’d like to know who they are,” said Florence scornfully.

“One of them you would be very pleased to have admire you,” Sally answered back, now having taken up the cudgels in good earnest.

“Will you pleathe to tell me who you mean,” returned Florence in a haughty tone.

“Oh, you needn’t look so scornful. It was Clyde Fawcett. I heard him say to your own brother, Frank, that he thought Ellen North was going to be a stunner, and Frank said: ‘I think she is now. She can have me.’ So there, miss.”

Florence’s eyes no longer looked dreamy, but flashed anger. “I think you’re perfectly horrid,” she exclaimed. “Come on, March.”

Sally, nothing abashed, walked across the school yard to where Ellen and Caro were sitting. She had made Ellen’s cause hers, and meant to so assert it. Hereafter Florence’s clique would no more name her as one of them.

It was quite true that Caro was assiduous in her attentions, for scarce a day passed that she did not offer up something upon the altar of her friendship,—a particularly big red apple, a package of fudge, a little basket of persimmons, one of chinquapins, or of nuts. Ellen accepted all these gratefully, and though she rather wearied of Caro’s caresses and words of endearment, often they comforted the lonely girl, who no longer received such marks of affection, Miss Rindy not being given to demonstration. However, she gave a sturdy sort of love to her young cousin, while her keen sense of humor saved situations which might have become difficult, or even tragic.

“We’re none of us paragons of perfection; you are not any more than the rest of the world,” she said one day when Ellen was repeating some of Caro’s remarks. “Compliments and appreciation are all very well in their way; they are the ice-cream and cake of life, but if you are going to depend upon them for a steady diet, you will have spiritual indigestion as sure as you’re born. We need to be bucked up by good honest criticism; that’s the roast beef.”

“And what is the bread and butter?” Ellen asked laughing.

“Work, like bread, is the staff of life; and butter, well, butter is the consciousness of having done our work as well as we could; the more you slight it the thinner it spreads.”

“I suppose that’s true,” returned Ellen thoughtfully. “But don’t you like compliments, Cousin Rindy?”

“I suppose, like other fools, I do, but I shouldn’t; they’re weakening to the character, they breed self-conceit, develop an inflated ego. Of all insufferable people, conceited ones are the worst. I’ve known some, a good many, too, who always set the highest value upon their own performances, but never valued what others did for them; placed their own affairs in the limelight, and never in the least appreciated what others did, in fact underrated the good deeds of others and vaunted their own.”

“One does like to be encouraged. I’m afraid I do need encouragement.”

“Ah, but encouragement is a different thing from vain compliments.”

“Didn’t your mother compliment you and commend you for things when you did them well?”

Miss Rindy was silent a moment and a grim look passed over her face. “No, I can’t say that she did. My brother was always the favorite. She expected everything of me, but I can’t say that I was fed up on compliments.”

“I didn’t know you had a brother. Is he living?”

“Yes, married and living in Seattle.”

“Oh.” Ellen wondered why she had never heard of him.

“My mother was an invalid for many years,” Miss Rindy went on. “She doted on Albert from the time he was a baby, for he was a very pretty child, and I wasn’t. He was gentle and good-natured, which I was not. Poor Mother adored beauty. She was romantic and sentimental. Her eldest child, my sister Cora, was a beauty and Mother was very proud of her, but she died when she was sixteen, and then plain little Rindy was the one that was left. I don’t think my mother ever got over the fact that the beauty was taken and the plain one left, so she poured out all her affection and pride upon Albert, spoiled him utterly.”

She paused, but Ellen saw a look upon her face which made her go over to her cousin and put her arms around her. “You dear, you dear,” she murmured. “You are perfectly beautiful to me, and I know you were to all those boys overseas that you did so much for.”

Miss Rindy turned her head away. “Don’t,” she said; but Ellen saw that there were tears in her eyes when again she took up her work.

This conversation not only made Ellen more appreciative of what her cousin was doing for her, but it made her eager to have more light thrown upon her history, and who could tell her better than Jeremy Todd, who had known Rindy Crump all his life. So to Jeremy did Ellen go for information.

It was one afternoon when the light was streaming in through the stained-glass windows of the little church. The organ lesson was over, and Jeremy had finished playing one of Ellen’s favorite sonatas. He never failed to do this after the lesson; then they would talk for a while and walk home together.

Ellen waited till the last chords died away before she said: “You knew Cousin Rindy’s brother, didn’t you, Mr. Todd? What sort of person was he?”

“Know Al Crump? Oh, yes, of course I knew him; a mighty agreeable person he was, everybody liked him, but he had no sort of stability about him, visionary, into any sort of scheme that came up, good looking and good tempered, but selfish.”

“I never knew till the other day that Cousin Rindy had a brother; she never mentions him.”

“That is not surprising, considering that she has not heard from him for years.”

“But she knows where he is; she told me he lived in Seattle.”

“So he does, but she doesn’t know it from him. Some of his old friends keep her informed. He is doing pretty well, I believe, has found his niche at last, and, having been thrown on his own resources, has worked out a better career than he could have done here. Probably it took a long time for his judgment to mature; it is that way sometimes.”

“Did they quarrel?”

“He and Rindy? Well, yes, I suppose you may say they did. You see he had absorbed everything his mother had, she never denied him anything he asked, so when she died all there was left was the house, which belongs to Rindy, left her by an aunt who had good sense enough to look out for her. I believe there was a little money left with it, besides. Albert was simply furious because Rindy refused to mortgage the house and let him invest her money in some wildcat scheme, but she set her foot down, wouldn’t budge an inch, and told him that a big husky man had absolutely no right to ask a woman to strip herself of her living that he might sink it in some worthless investment. He already had defrauded her of her share of her father’s property, which her mother had let him have to invest from time to time, and now that it was gone she meant to hold on to what was hers in her own right.”

“Good! I am glad she had the courage to say that.”

“It was exactly the best thing to say, although it sent Albert off in a rage. He never had been talked to like that, consequently he had been slow in developing. Petted and indulged, admired and flattered, he couldn’t see how any one should think he was anything but perfect. There must have been good stuff in him, for now he is making good, has waked up to a realization of the fact that if one expects to get anywhere he must use his own feet and not expect always to be carried.”

“Does Cousin Rindy know he is making good?”

“Oh, yes, and I think it is a satisfaction to her, although it must be bitter to think that after all her sacrifices for him and her mother he is so indifferent to her. Nobody has ever done anything for Rindy, but all her life she has done for others. She never had any youth, for she had to bear all the burdens, had to see her brother strut off dressed up in handsome clothes while she sat at home and drudged for him and her invalid mother, scarcely knowing what it was to have a decent new dress.”

“How horrid! How mean!” cried Ellen, starting up. “And now she is drudging for me. I’ll make it up to her some day, see if I don’t; and if I see any chance now to give her a good time, I’ll do it. You’ll tell me, won’t you, Mr. Todd, if you hear of any way she can have some fun?”

“I’ll tell you,” he replied, smiling at her excitement.

“I’m so glad you told me all this, for now I shall try to be as useful to her as I possibly can. Just think what she is doing for me, keeping me out of an orphanage, very likely. I’d be a perfect pig not to appreciate it.”

Mr. Todd nodded, with the thought in his mind that Miss Rindy might truly be said to have cast her bread upon the waters, but that he was convinced of its return to her.

They passed out of the dim and shadowy old church into the bright sunlight, and walked slowly toward home. On their way they encountered their small neighbor, Billy Hale, running madly after two small dogs who were trotting side by side down the middle of the street. Billy had a tin cup of water in his hand, and just as Ellen and her companion came up the youngster had succeeded in dashing the last of the water over the two dogs.

“What in the world are you doing, Billy?” asked Ellen, stopping short.

He came prancing up, glee written on his rosy face. “Now they’re married,” he exclaimed joyfully; “they’ve had a wetting.”

Ellen turned with a puzzled look to Mr. Todd, who threw back his head and shouted with laughter. “Don’t you understand?” he said. “Dovey means a wedding.”

“Yes,” Billy nodded cheerfully; “they’ve had a wetting, so they’re married.” He slipped his small hand into Ellen’s and looked smilingly up at her. “My mamma is going to a wetting next week; she said so; it is going to be in the church. I wish she’d take me. Do you think they’ll sing about Sara Phim?”

“Ask Mr. Todd; he can tell all about the music, you know.”

“Will they sing about Sara Phim?” asked Billy, turning his attention to the organist.

“Not this time,” was the response.

By now they had reached Mr. Todd’s gate. Hearing Lucilena’s terrifying threat that if he didn’t come home a-bilin’ she’d skin him alive, Billy dashed on while Ellen lingered a moment by the gate. “Such a fanciful little monkey as he is,” she said. “I must tell Cousin Rindy about the wetting; she loves Billy’s funny little sayings. You won’t forget, will you, Mr. Todd, to think up some way that I can earn some money or do something for Cousin Rindy? I am in dead earnest.”

“I won’t forget.”

Ellen nodded, waved her hand, and passed on. Mr. Todd opened the gate and went in. Half-way up the walk he stopped short. “I believe I have it,” he exclaimed. “To be sure. Why not? I’ll find out to-morrow.” Then he went on.

CHAPTER VI

A BIRTHDAY PARTY

It was almost summer, however, before Jeremy Todd was able to carry out the plan which had occurred to him on the day when the dogs had had their “wetting.” In the meantime the days had gone busily for Ellen. What with keeping up with her class at school, performing the duties her cousin allotted her at home, and giving such attention as was possible to her music, there was no time for moping. Christmas passed quietly. Some little gifts came from the old friends in the city, Caro gave her a large box of candy which brought the charge from Miss Rindy that she was not to make herself sick eating it, and from some unknown quarter came a box of flowers. Dear old Jeremy smuggled in a set of Browning, looking furtively around as he produced it, as if he suspected Bessie would be on his track. Miss Rindy sniffed when Ellen displayed the gift.

“I don’t see where he got the money to buy it,” she said. “Perfect nonsense, anyway. Don’t try to make me read the stuff.” Ellen, however, was delighted, and ransacked her mother’s trunks, at last pouncing on a collection of bound music which was almost new, and which she decided would make a suitable gift for her good friend.

Her happiest hours were those spent in the church at the organ, or in listening to Jeremy as he poured forth his soul in music. Ellen made great progress, to the intense satisfaction of her teacher. “Not a doubt but you’ll take my place one of these days,” he told her.

“But I don’t want to take your place,” declared Ellen vehemently.

“Not when I’m no longer able to do my duty by the old organ? I’m counting on you as my successor.”

Ellen had no answer to make to this, for it was a subject she did not care to dwell upon.

One day in May, when trees were in blossom and birds were singing, Jeremy wound up his playing with Mendelssohn’s “Spring Song,” saying, as he turned on his bench, “Hackneyed as it is, I had to play that to-day. Songs without words are all around us, and we must join in. Let’s see how well you can play the ‘Wedding March’ for the birds who are mating.” He produced the music and gave his place to Ellen, listening critically as she went on. He did not interrupt, but when she had sounded the last notes he said, “Let me give you one or two suggestions and then you play it over.”

Ellen obeyed, carefully following out his directions.

“Better, much better,” he cried as the last notes died away. “Good enough for any wedding party that is likely to hear it in this church. Now I have a proposition to make to you. For years I have wanted to go to the Bach Festival at Bethlehem. This year it seemed that all was favorable for me to go. It would be a sad disappointment to me if I were to miss it. I should have to be away two or three days, and just at the last I am informed that a wedding will take place in the church on one of those very days when I should be absent. Now, then, my dear, I want you to do me the favor of taking my place. You can do it perfectly well. I have trained you on the Lohengrin music with this in view, and now we have the Mendelssohn march quite ready. What do you say?”

“Oh, Mr. Todd, do you really think I can do it well enough?” Ellen was quite overcome.

“Certainly you can. In the first place there will be no musical critics present, and in the second place no one will notice anything but the wedding party. You might play execrably and it would make no difference so long as there was an approach to the familiar strains. I will see that some one is at hand to tell you when to begin and when to stop, so you won’t be flustered.”

“You know I would do almost anything for you, Mr. Todd,” said Ellen earnestly, “and if you think I can do it well enough and won’t get panicky I’ll try my best.”

“Good girl! Now then, I want you to know that you will be doing not only a great favor to me, but you will be earning five dollars, for that is what is paid for the music.”

“Oh, but, Mr. Todd, I couldn’t take any money when I am simply acting in your place; besides, see how much in your debt I am already.”

“Nonsense, nonsense! There is no question of debt. I have enjoyed our lessons more than I can tell you, and am I to be paid for receiving pleasure? No, no, that is out of the question. Moreover, I shall stay at home unless you are willing to make this a matter of business. Do you want to deprive me of that which I have longed for during all these years?”

“No, no, I don’t want that; of course I don’t; I want you to go. I’ll not do anything to keep you.”

“Then it’s settled. You take my place and I go to the festival with joy. It will be one of the happiest experiences of my life. Now I will tell you that I hoped for this long ago, when you first asked me to think of some way in which you could earn money. Perhaps you have wondered why I have been so particular about these wedding marches. I wanted to prepare you for some such occasion. Now I am perfectly satisfied that you will do me credit, and I can go off with a clear conscience.”

“How can I thank you? It is perfectly wonderful,” said Ellen with shining eyes.

“It is wonderful for me. Now, how are you going to spend the money? You have said that you longed to do something for Rindy. What is it to be?”

“A party. She shall have a birthday party. She has never had one in her life. Of course it can’t be a very stylish affair, but it will be in June, rose time, and there will be flowers to dress up the house with.”

“All you want from our bushes. Great scheme, Ellen. I’ll help all I can.” It was just the sort of thing to appeal to Jeremy.

“We mustn’t let her know till the last minute, or she will throw cold water on the plan. She will say it is extravagant, and I mustn’t spend money on her. But is it extravagant to do her honor, to give her a good time when she has never had any? Is it foolish, Mr. Todd?”

“It is not, and you will be giving others a good time, too, so the circle widens. I approve heartily.”

So from this time on Ellen began to scheme. She made out her list of invitations and went around to deliver them herself. “It is a sort of surprise party,” she told Miss Rindy’s friends; “at least she is not to know about it till the day. I am giving her the party for a birthday present.”

“You are? Well, I call that real nice of you,” said Mrs. Todd, who was the first to be approached. “I don’t suppose you’d mind if I sent in a birthday cake, would you?”

“Oh, no, indeed. I’d be only too delighted to have it. Thank you very much indeed, Mrs. Todd, for thinking of it. You are sure it won’t be too much trouble for you?”

“No, it will be a pleasure. Now Jeremy is away I only have myself to cook for, you know.”

The gist of the matter was that by the time Ellen had concluded her rounds no less than six birthday cakes had been promised, while Maria Perry asked if she didn’t want some pretty little candies to set off her table, and Mrs. Hale offered to make a fruit punch, herself supplying the fruit.

“I certainly do want to help all I can,” said this lady. “You say you are going to have ice-cream. Are you going to buy it or make it?”

“I shall have to buy it,” Ellen told her, “for in the first place I don’t know how to make it, and then we haven’t such a thing as a freezer.”

Mrs. Hale considered the matter for a moment. “I tell you what you can do,” she said. “Make it over here. Lucilena makes fine ice-cream, and she’d love to help. We have a great big freezer which can be kept here and taken over when you’re ready for it. I’ll order the ice and things for you, and that will let you out of that much trouble.”

“How good you are,” cried Ellen gratefully. “Every one is so kind.”

“It’s mighty little to do for Miss Rindy,” declared Mrs. Hale. “She’s always doing something for the rest of us, but never lets us do anything for her. I shall never forget how good she was to us when Billy had diphtheria. I believe she saved his life. Oh, no, you mustn’t think it counts for anything to do this little bit.”

Having made all her arrangements for the party, Ellen next turned her attention to her music for the wedding. It was an ordeal, but she meant to meet it bravely, and so she did. It was a noon affair, but not a stylish one. The bride was a simple little country girl, the bridegroom a young farmer, but a church wedding they must have, flowers on the altar and the conventional music. Ellen acquitted herself creditably, saw the bridal party depart amid showers of rice, and passed out to be clasped by Caro.

“Oh, Ellen,” cried this devoted friend, “I was so thrilled. To think it was you playing the wedding march! Now, I want you to promise on your sacred word of honor that you will play for me when I get married.”

“Isn’t it a little early to plan for that?” inquired Ellen laughing.

“Well, maybe it is,” returned Caro with perfect seriousness, “but I want to be sure of you.”

“Evidently you think I’m a slippery sort of person,” returned Ellen teasingly.

“No, no, you know I don’t think that, but it will be such a lovely thing to look forward to.”

“Your wedding, or my performance?”

“Stop teasing,” said Caro, giving her a gentle shake. “What are you going to do now?”

“I am going home to haul over the things in one of my mother’s trunks. Cousin Rindy has got to have something to wear to her party. I have told every one to dress up in her best, but, dear me, you know what Cousin Rindy’s best is. She hasn’t even the plainest sort of white frock to her name, just some old lawns and things, and I want to see her dressed up for once in her life.”

“What do you think you can find to dress her up in?” inquired Caro, who was deeply interested in the coming event.

“I think there is a black lace dress of Mother’s which will do. Dear Mother kept it to wear evenings when she went out to sing. She disposed of all her colored dresses when she went into mourning for my father.”

“And what shall you wear?”

“Cousin Rindy has made over for me the only white dress that Mother had. Dear Mother had worn out most of the other things, so there wasn’t much left that could be used, but I’m pretty sure of the black lace, and I think Cousin Rindy can wear it just as it is.”

“I am just crazy to see how she will look. When are you going to tell her, Ellen?”

“Not till the very day. You mustn’t fail me, Caro. You know you are to help serve the refreshments.”

“Fail you? I never was more excited in my life. I wouldn’t miss it for the world. Every one is talking about it.”

“I hope to goodness they won’t let the cat out of the bag. I do want to keep it a secret up to the very day. Cousin Rindy is capable of balking if you give her time to think.”

The lace dress was discovered to be in quite as good order as Ellen had hoped. It was shaken out and hung up in her clothespress, to be ready for the great day.

It was mid-June. There was no school to think of, for the summer holidays had begun. Mr. Todd had returned long since from his outing, uplifted because of the good time he had had, meeting old friends, talking with kindred spirits, and, above all, listening to such music as he had not heard since his student days. “Some day you must go,” he told Ellen as he ended his account of his experiences.

“It will be a long time before I arrive at a proper appreciation of Bach,” Ellen told him, “and still longer before I can afford such a jaunt.”

“One never knows,” returned her friend. “I was a long time saving enough for the journey, and could never have indulged myself in such extravagance if a friend had not made it possible by inviting me to stay with him. However, my child, as I said, one never knows. There may be a perfect rush of weddings when your services will be required at the organ.”

“No, indeed, I shall not take your place again. I feel guilty, as it is, to have accepted your fee.”

“You earned it, and did mighty well, I hear. It won’t do to say you will never do it again; I might have lumbago.” And he went off chuckling.

Long before this Ellen had lost all awe of her cousin. At first, depressed, lonely, grief-stricken, she had shown only a meek spirit. She did not know what kindness, justice, and good sense lay behind Miss Rindy’s abrupt manner, but in time she found out, her spirits revived, and she teased, cajoled, made enthusiastic appeals, just as she had done in her own home.

On the morning of Miss Rindy’s birthday she began her manœuvres at the breakfast table. “I hope you don’t forget that this is your birthday,” she said. “Now, would you rather I kissed you once a minute for three-quarters of an hour, or will you take a kiss once a day for forty-six days?”

“You ridiculous girl! You know what I think about kissing.”

“That’s the reason I asked. I didn’t know but you would rather have it over at once than prolong the agony.”

“I don’t see the necessity of doing either.”

“We’ve got to do something to celebrate, so I thought that might appeal to you as being a cheap way of getting out of it. If you object to that form of celebration, what do you say to a party?”

“A party, indeed! What are you talking about? I never had a party in my life.”

“Then it’s high time you had, and I mean that you shall.”

“You do, do you? I suppose you mean to furnish party dresses, refreshments, decorations, and all that.”

“Of course I do.”

“And where, may I ask, do you expect to get the money?”

“Oh, I have money enough. Five dollars should cover the expense of the modest entertainment I have in mind.”

“Five dollars, and where did you get five dollars?” Miss Rindy leaned forward with real eagerness.

“Earned it.”

“How?”

“Playing wedding marches for Miss Matilda Andrews’ wedding.”

“You don’t mean to say they paid you for that? I thought you did it as a favor so Jeremy could go to that musical thing he was so set upon.”

“He called it a favor, but I was paid just the same.”

“You ought to give it right back to him.”

“I tried to, but he won’t take it, so to ease my conscience I am going to blow it in on a party for you, which he can enjoy as well as the rest.”

“That is a perfectly absurd and ridiculous notion. You need shoes.”

“I can get along with those I have, or wear a pair of Mother’s if I stuff cotton in the toes. If worst comes to worst, I can go to one of those communities where they run around barefoot for their health’s sake. Now, Cousin Rindy, I don’t mind those disapproving looks one little bit. I’ve made all my arrangements. In a few minutes I expect the first birthday cake to be delivered. The invitations are all out; I hope you will approve of the list. The cakes are baked, or will be before the morning is over, so this evening you must be ready to receive your guests. I don’t believe you will be so cruel as to disappoint them and me.”

Miss Rindy’s usually firm lips began to quiver. “But Ellen, but Ellen——”

“Ellen me no Ellens. Unless you want me to die of mortification you will succumb gracefully.”

“It looks as if I must,” Miss Rindy sighed half wistfully. “But I have nothing suitable to wear.”

“Oh, yes, you have. When we have finished the breakfast dishes we will go up-stairs and try it on.”

“What is it?” Miss Rindy’s curiosity really was aroused.

“That black lace of Mother’s. I am sure it will fit you, or at least, made as it is, you can wear it. I want you to take it as a birthday gift from me.”

“I shall not do it. You will need it yourself some day.”

“Do you consider black lace suitable for a chit of a girl? By the time I could wear it, firstly, it would be all out of style; secondly, it will have turned brown or green from lying away; and thirdly, it may drop to pieces from the same cause. Now be a nice, good child and do this for me. I want you to wear, too, that pretty bead chain thing one of your soldier boys made, and sent you last Christmas. You never would wear it, and now’s your chance. It will set off your dress beautifully, and with a rose or two you will look like a queen. Don’t dawdle over your food, Orinda; there is a lot to be done, and we must get on.”

“I declare, Ellen,” Miss Rindy began as she took up her knife and fork again, but she stopped short, and looked so pathetically meek that Ellen felt like laughing, telling herself that her cousin stood bossing pretty well.

The rest of the day Miss Rindy acted like one in a daze. The dress was found to suit perfectly, although at first Miss Rindy insisted that she had never worn anything so low in the neck, and that it must be fastened up close to her chin, as she never wore anything in any other way.

“Then it is high time you did,” insisted Ellen, still bossy. “Any one with such a pretty white throat should show it. My conscience, Cousin Rindy! Nobody could call that anything but modest in the extreme.”

“But I shall be so conscious and uncomfortable.”

“You’ll be mighty comfortable on a hot day like this, and if it should happen that you sink through the floor with shame I’ll get the rector to go down into the cellar and bring you up.”

“You do talk the most utter nonsense.”

“Every one talks nonsense when they’re giving a birthday party. I hope I won’t do anything perfectly scan’lous before the day is over.”

“I’m not sure that you won’t,” returned Miss Rindy grimly, “considering the way you have begun.”

“That isn’t a circumstance to the way I shall end,” retorted Ellen lightly.

“I want to see that list of invitations,” Miss Rindy changed the subject.

“You shall see it.”

“How did you word your notes?”

“Like this: ‘Miss Ellen North’s compliments to Mrs. So-and-So, and requests the pleasure of her company on June fifteenth at eight o’clock in the evening at a birthday party in honor of Miss Orinda Crump.’ Of course, it was rather formal, and as I took them around myself I needn’t have written them, but could have delivered my message in person, but I wanted to be sure how many would accept, and then I didn’t want them to forget.”

“Nobody in this town would be likely to forget a party at Rindy Crump’s,” was the comment, given gruffly.

There never was a more active person than Ellen showed herself to be that day. She made the house into a bower, she was “up-stairs, down-stairs, and in my lady’s chamber,” so that every room was rose-sweet. The cakes kept arriving up to the last minute,—even Miss Sophia Garrett sent one,—and the bowl of fruit punch was delivered safely, while the freezer of ice-cream stood in readiness to be brought over by Lucilena at the last moment. Mrs. Hale offered to lend Lucilena for the occasion, that dusky person eagerly seconding the offer. Wipers was dressed up in a flaunting blue bow made from a discarded hair ribbon of Caro’s; to be truthful one must relate that it was torn to bits before midnight in an affray with Bunty, but this did not prevent Wipers’ initial appearance from being quite magnificent.

The hardest duty of the day was that of dressing up Miss Rindy, who balked every step of the way. “You must let me do your hair,” Ellen insisted at the outset.

“What for?” asked Miss Rindy.

“Because I want it to be becoming.”

“It does well enough. I’ve always worn it this way, and I don’t mean to change.”

“Just for this once; if you don’t like it you can go back to the old way. Do you know I read somewhere that a woman doesn’t begin to grow old till she ceases to change the arrangement of her hair. I am crazy to see how you will look when I am through with you.”

“Very well, go ahead, but I warn you that if I don’t like it, down it comes.”

Ellen went ahead. She waved, fluffed out, brought down becoming locks over the high expanse of her cousin’s forehead, and then giggled as she stood off to see the effect.

“I suppose I do look like a perfect guy,” said Miss Rindy, “so it’s no wonder you’re laughing at me. Give me that hand mirror.”

“No, no, you are not to see yourself till you are all dressed. I was laughing because I’m so pleased at the result of my efforts.”

“You don’t expect me to get dressed twice. How can I do my hair with that fancy frock on?”

“That is just what I don’t expect. I guarantee that you won’t want to take off the frock once you see how well you look.” She slipped the dress over her cousin’s head, fastened it, after many objections to the extremely modest display of throat, finished it off with an old-fashioned pin, swung the chain into place, then turned her cousin around to face the large mirror. “There,” she exclaimed, “how do you think you look?”

“Like a fool,” responded Miss Rindy with her twist of a smile.

“Orinda Crump, I am ashamed of you! You know perfectly well that you never looked so well in all your life. You’d pass for no more than thirty-five at the most. Will you have a dab of powder on your nose? You won’t? Well, with your nice complexion you really don’t need it. ’Fess up that you are pleased as Punch.”

“I have to acknowledge, Ellen, that I never dreamed that dress could make such a difference, and that I suppose I am a vain old goose to be so pleased, but what troubles me is what people will think. I know what Sophy Bennett will say: ‘There’s no fool like an old fool.’”

“What do you care what she says or thinks? I’m sorry I invited her if you think she’ll make you feel uncomfortable.”

“She won’t, not any more than any one else. Let’s go down, Ellen, before I get so puffed up looking at myself in the glass that there’ll be no enduring me.”

“There’s the bell,” cried Ellen.

“Don’t leave me up here alone,” Miss Rindy called after her, “for there is no knowing into what self-abasement I may plunge. If I don’t rend my heart I may rend my garments, so wait for me, and, once having put my hand to the plough, I shall not dare to turn back.”

Ellen waited for her half-way down the stairs, and together they greeted the first arrivals, these happening to be Caro and her parents.

“It’s good you happen to be the first, Sam Rowe,” was Miss Rindy’s greeting to the doctor. “This is my first party, you know, and I’m liable to faint dead away from excitement, I’m in such a flutter.”

“You don’t look much as if you’d faint,” returned the doctor. “I never saw you look so well.”

“Why, Rindy Crump,” Mrs. Rowe had been looking her over, “what have you been doing to yourself? You look ten years younger.”

“Doesn’t she?” the doctor agreed. “You’re almost good-looking, Rindy.”

“Sh! Sh!” warned Miss Rindy. “Here come some more people. I must compose my countenance. If you don’t stop your compliments, I shall have a rush of blood to the head, and then what? Go along, Sam Rowe, and try out your flattery on some one else, Sophy Bennett, for instance.”

The doctor made a wry face but moved on, and soon Miss Rindy was surrounded by her guests.

CHAPTER VII

GETTING OUT OF DIFFICULTIES

Never had Rindy Crump’s old house witnessed such gayety as it did that evening. Every one seemed bound to give the hostess a good time. Jeremy Todd brought his ’cello, Dr. Rowe contributed his stock of funny stories, and Barry Hale did some imitations which convulsed every one. The surprise of the evening was when Ellen picked up Jeremy’s violin. He had left it with her earlier in the day, and he now accompanied her on the ’cello as she played a lively gavotte. She looked very charming as she stood in her simple white frock, with the violin tucked under her chin, and she had at least one adorer in Caro, who watched her ecstatically.

After the applause had died away Caro rushed forward. “Oh, Ellen,” she cried, “you never told me you could play the violin. How accomplished you are.”

Ellen laughed. “If you were but aware how little I do know, you would never call me accomplished. I knew a very little to begin with, and, as I have no violin of my own, I have had no chance to practise, but Mr. Todd has been good enough to instruct me in this one piece and has lent me his violin so I could do it.”

“Nevertheless it was a very creditable performance,” said the rector, coming up, “and has certainly added to the pleasure of the evening. Your party is a big success.”

Ellen felt that so far it was, but the refreshments were yet to be served, and she could not be quite happy till she was sure that these were all right. Time was passing, and it now was the hour when she must look to matters in the kitchen. Miss Rindy had promised not to interfere, so Ellen felt the entire responsibility, and was anxious. Suppose salt were to get into the ice-cream, or a bat had fallen into the punch! She voiced her fears to Caro as they left the front room together.

“You certainly have a lively imagination,” declared Caro. “I might have thought of the salt, but I never could have thought of the bat. Do you want me to serve the punch or just pass around things?”

“Mrs. Hale says she will serve the punch, so you and Sally can pass around. Mrs. Todd is going to help me with the ice-cream, and Lucilena is going to wash up the glasses and things.”

“I think you have managed everything wonderfully.”

“Don’t give me the credit; it is chiefly due to the neighbors, who have been so kind and helpful.”

Mrs. Todd and Mrs. Hale both had followed the girls into the kitchen. Lucilena had arrived, reporting that she had left Billy sound asleep.

“I’ll cut the cake,” offered Mrs. Todd, “while you attend to the ice-cream, Marietta. The punch is all ready, isn’t it? Lucilena can carry it in, can’t she?”

“Yes, indeed she can, and then she can open the freezer.”

“Oh, and please don’t let her get salt in it,” begged Ellen.

Mrs. Hale laughed. “I can promise she won’t do that; she has opened too many freezers to make a mistake.”

Ellen stood by, anxiously watching the process as Lucilena removed the ice, carefully wiping the top of the freezer before taking it off. Ellen peered interestedly in at the contents. “It looks mighty good,” she remarked.

“It bleedged to be,” responded Lucilena, picking up a spoon and deftly whipping off a taste which she put into her capacious mouth. “Jes’ sample it to see if all right,” she explained. But immediately her expression changed. “Law, Miss Mar’etta,” she cried, “it got no mo’ flavah dan nothin’ ’tall. I done fergits to put in dat bernilla. What we do ’bout it?”

“O dear!” exclaimed Ellen in distress.

Both Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Todd came over to see if Lucilena were really right about it. “It is as flat as can be; I am so sorry,” said Mrs. Hale after critically trying a spoonful. “I don’t know what we can do about it; I suppose we shall have to serve it just as it is.”

Ellen looked ready to cry. After all her efforts, to have such a thing happen was too much. Lucilena stood, arms akimbo, head one side, looking down at the freezer as if she expected a genie to appear and set things right. Ellen, with clasped hands, gazed pleadingly at Mrs. Todd, who looked aloft as she spatted her hands together thoughtfully. Mrs. Hale shook her head mournfully at Lucilena.

Presently Mrs. Todd thought of the remedy. “Put the cover back on the freezer, Lucilena,” she ordered. “We can serve it with chocolate sauce and no one will know the difference. It won’t take long to make it. I’ll run over home and get the chocolate; I have plenty.” She hurried off.

Ellen breathed a sigh of relief. This was a way out, but again came a difficulty when Caro said: “But every one doesn’t like chocolate sauce. I know my father doesn’t.”

“Oh!” Ellen again clasped her hands in dismay.

But here Mrs. Hale, inspired by Mrs. Todd, came to the rescue. “Don’t worry, Ellen,” she said; “we can have strawberry sauce, too, for those that don’t care for the chocolate. Run over, Lucilena, and get that box of strawberries out of the refrigerator.”

“Oh, but I don’t like to take your strawberries,” protested Ellen.

“It’s up to me to do what I can to correct the mistake,” declared Mrs. Hale. “We can have some other kind of fruit for breakfast as well as not. For my own part I’ll enjoy the berries much more with the ice-cream.”

Mrs. Todd was back in no time with the chocolate, and following her came Lucilena, the box of berries in one hand, and sleepy Billy slung over her shoulder. “He jes’ cryin’ pitably,” she explained, “t’arin’ his mouf open an’ yellin’, ‘Daddy, Daddy! dey ain’t nobody here to tek keer o’ me but angels, and it’s too dark to see ’em.’”

“The little dear,” murmured Ellen, as she carried the child to his mother, who cuddled and comforted him, though, with so many to take care of him, he was soon broad awake and clamoring for ice-cream.

While Mrs. Todd was busy making the chocolate sauce the girls prepared the strawberries, and before long everything was ready, the delay being scarcely noticed by the guests. Then the girls scurried to the front with plates and doilies, these last borrowed from Mrs. Hale, and the ice-cream was served, praised, and consumed without the least suspicion that in its original form it lacked flavor. Most of the cakes were delicious, though, to her mortification, Miss Sophia Bennett’s was found to be “sad,” and was set aside. Nobody missed it, however, for there was an abundance without it.

After all, Lucilena didn’t wash the dishes. She had her fill of the refreshments, gave Billy more than was good for him, then sat down and rocked him to sleep, crooning over him, and once in a while taking a dip from the saucer of ice-cream which she kept by her side. At last, becoming sleepy herself, without further concern she bore Billy off to his home, put him, sound asleep, in his crib, and went to bed without a qualm of conscience.

So to the girls fell the task of washing the dishes, but they made so merry over it that it brought from the front room the last lingering guests, Doctor and Mrs. Rowe, waiting for their daughter; the Hales, who were to take home some of the “borrowings”; and the Todds, who wanted to talk over matters with the rest.

Dr. Rowe was the first to open the kitchen door and peep in. “Here, here, what’s all this fun about?” he exclaimed. “Let me in on it, can’t you?”

“Not unless you share the work,” said his daughter saucily.

“Glad to do it. Do I wear an apron? Am I to wash or wipe?”

“Neither,” Ellen told him. “We are in the thick of it, and may as well finish. Are you willing to make yourself useful in any old way?”

“You have but to command me.”

“Then you can sort out those punch glasses and put them carefully in that basket; they go back to the Hales, that is, all those with the wall of Tyre decoration; the others belong to Mrs. Todd.”

“Be sure you don’t break any, Daddy,” sang out Caro. “You know what to expect from Mrs. Todd, if you do.”

“I’m not in the least afraid of Bessie Todd,” the doctor declared emphatically. “I’ve ordered her about too many times in the past not to expect her to stand in awe of me.”

“What’s that about Bessie Todd?” asked that person appearing at the door.

“I said I wasn’t afraid of you, but that I expected you to be afraid of me,” retorted the doctor.

“That day has passed,” replied Mrs. Todd.

“Better not be too sure. Wait till you get down with an illness and see if you dare disobey my orders. I wish you’d come here and finish this job. You know better than I do which of these glasses belong in your cupboard.”

Mrs. Todd was not unwilling, and the doctor turned to Ellen, saying: “I have an understudy. What shall I do now?”

Ellen surveyed the room. “You see that cake over there. You can eat what you can of it, and I will see what can be done with the rest.”

“That cake? I’d as soon swallow a bullet. Do you want me to die of acute indigestion? It’s as heavy as lead, girl. Throw it away.”

Mrs. Todd left the glasses and came over to regard the cake critically. “It is rather heavy,” she commented, “but the edges might be used in cabinet pudding.”

“Then please take it and make the pudding,” cried the doctor, “but I will not be responsible for your death or Jeremy’s. If I have a hurry call from you to-morrow night, I shall know what remedies to bring.”

Mrs. Todd laughed. “I was going to invite you to dinner, but now I shall not.”

“Good thing, too. Here, give me that broom, Ellen. I’ll sweep up.”

With the many hands at work the kitchen was soon in fair order, the last goodnights were said, and Ellen was left alone with her cousin.

“We haven’t gone very far along with the kisses,” she said. “At this rate we’ll never get to the forty-sixth.” She put her arms around Miss Rindy and kissed her. “How did you like your party? How do you feel now that it is over?”

“I feel ten years younger, though I’m wondering what the tongues will say when they go clacking to-morrow.”

“What could they say?”

“They could say vanity, extravagance, foolishness. Why couldn’t they spend their money on something sensible when they have so little of it? Why did old Rindy Crump doll herself up like a sixteen-year-old? Hadn’t she any better sense?”

“Now, Cousin Rindy!” Ellen was really hurt. “I don’t see why you should be so suspicious. I don’t believe there was a person here who would say or even think such things.”

“Well, maybe not. The fact of the matter is, Ellen, that I have enjoyed myself so greatly that I feel sort of queer about it, as if I hadn’t any right to. I told you that I had never had a party in all my life, but I didn’t tell you that it was something I always longed for but never felt that I should afford. But when you took the matter into your own hands I was weak enough not to protest overmuch.”

“You dear thing,” said Ellen, giving her a close hug. “If you could have heard how everybody rejoiced when I told them you were to have a party, you could never think they disapproved. I never saw more enthusiasm, nor such kind friends.”

“What about Sophy Bennett and Bessie Todd?”

“Poor Miss Bennett came out into the kitchen to see her cake cut, and was so mortified because it was so heavy no one could think of eating it. I felt really sorry for her. As for Mrs. Todd, well, things might have fallen flatter than the cake if she hadn’t come to the rescue.” Then Ellen told of the ice-cream episode, ending up with: “And no one was the wiser. Indeed I think the two kinds of sauce were a great addition.”

“I think so myself. Wasn’t it just like that trifling Lucilena to leave out something? It’s a mercy it wasn’t sugar. I suppose she was of some use, however.”

Ellen laughed. “I can’t remember that she did anything but take the ice out of the freezer and go after the strawberries. But, no matter, we all pitched in, washed up the dishes, and had a lot of fun over it.”

“I feel sort of condemned to have stood back and let you have the entire responsibility as well as the work.”

“But you promised, you know; besides, this was your day, and——” Ellen paused, then she said with a little laugh, “I don’t believe that all these good people would have been so ready to contribute and to help you if I hadn’t asked them, because, dear Lady Orinda, you are a bit stand-offish, and are so proud and haughty that you won’t let any one do things for you if you can avoid it, while I am such a young and humble little ‘creetur’ that I appeal.”

“Humble, are you? I haven’t seen much humility, though I admit you are young.”

“But I’m growing older every minute. Just think, it won’t be long before I am sixteen, and then what?”

“That’s what I’ve been thinking,” Miss Rindy sighed. “If you are going to make music your profession, you should have better opportunities than this little town affords. You’ll never get anywhere living always in this poky place. Jeremy says there isn’t a doubt but you could make your way in the city, and it is there you should go to study.”

“Don’t let’s cross that bridge yet. Who knows what may happen? It will be a long time before I have learned all Mr. Todd can teach me; meanwhile I am learning lots of other things, and am growing fonder and fonder of the place, the people, and my own home.”

Miss Rindy took her by the shoulders and looked her straight in the eyes. “Then you aren’t unhappy, Ellen. You are satisfied to be with me.”

Ellen took the two hands laid on her shoulders and kissed first one and then the other. “Dear Cousin Rindy,” she said, “I don’t know what I should have done without you. Of course I was very unhappy at first, while it was all so strange, and the time had been so short since I had lost my dear ones. I would have been unhappy anywhere and with any one, but think what it is to have you, and Jeremy Todd, and Caro, not to mention all the other dear people. I have had to get used to the different way of looking at things, the different standards, but it doesn’t matter a particle now when they call me red-head, and think buttonhole mouths and wasp waists and——”

“High foreheads,” put in Miss Rindy.

“Yes, it was hard to think that all those old-fashioned standards of beauty were the correct ones. I was sort of bewildered at first, because I had lived with artists who don’t admire such things, but now I don’t care, and there is no one in the world who is as much to me as you are.”

“That is a satisfaction to me. Well, Ellen, I reckon we’ll hit it off pretty well as long as we are destined to live together. When the time comes to separate, as it must some day, neither of us will feel like chuckling,” which was as near as Miss Rindy could come to expressing her real affection. “Come along, now,” she added, changing the subject abruptly, “it is long past bedtime; we won’t want to get up in the morning.”

They went up to their rooms. The scent of roses and honeysuckle was wafted into their windows. Ellen went to hers and knelt down to look up at the quiet stars. “Dear Mother, dear Father,” she murmured, “I hope that you can see me, and that you know how good a home I have. It will comfort you to know.”

Then suddenly upon the balmy air of the June night came the sound of music near, very near. Jeremy Todd was playing on his violin directly under the windows. Ellen ran to her cousin’s room. “Cousin Rindy, Cousin Rindy,” she whispered, “do you hear? It is Mr. Todd, and he is serenading you.”

“Now isn’t that just like Jeremy Todd to do a sentimental thing like that? The end of a perfect day, I suppose he’d call it.”

“But isn’t that just what it is?” said Ellen.

“Well, yes, I suppose it is; it’s the end, anyway.” She did not object, however, to kneeling down with Ellen by the open window into which the light from a half moon streamed.

“Isn’t it lovely?” sighed Ellen, as Jeremy, with a high, fine, long-drawn note, finished what he was playing. Then he began the air of one of the Schumann songs. Ellen leaned out to toss a rose to the serenader. “Troubadour, troubadour,” she called, “I’m coming down.”

“Why in the world do you want to do that?” inquired Miss Rindy.

“I’ll show you when I get down there. Now please do stay just where you are. I won’t be gone very long. Please stay, Cousin Rindy.” And Miss Rindy stayed.

Ellen ran out upon the moonlit grass plot where intricate shadows were swaying. She said something in a low tone to Jeremy, and he tuned his violin anew. Then upon the quiet night arose Ellen’s sweet, fresh voice in the song her mother loved, Schumann’s “Moonlight.”

“That was well done,” said Mr. Todd as the last note died away. “When you are a little older, your voice should be cultivated, Ellen.”

Ellen shook her head. “We can’t talk about that now. I think Cousin Rindy has had a perfectly fine birthday, don’t you, Mr. Todd? And it was so dear of you to finish it up with the lovely music, like a good-night blessing, wasn’t it? I am sure Cousin Rindy enjoyed it, though she may not say so, and I’m not quite sure that she would understand ‘Moonlight.’ I felt that I must sing it—for Mother. On this lovely night she seems so near.”

“I think she is,” responded Mr. Todd. “The music was for you, Ellen, as much as for Miss Rindy.”

“I knew that as soon as you began. I must go in. Cousin Rindy will think I am crazy to stay out so long. Good-night, and thank you, thank you, thank you for the serenade.”

She ran in to find Miss Rindy had arisen from her knees and was taking down her hair and preparing for bed.

“Did you ever have a serenade before?” asked Ellen. “How did you like it?”

“Oh, pretty well. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard Jeremy scraping on his fiddle. You’ve got a right pretty voice, Ellen, but I can’t say there was much tune to the thing you sang. What was it?”

“It is called ‘Moonlight,’ and this seemed just the time to sing it. Mother loved it. I thought she’d like me to sing it for you on your birthday.”

“Maybe so, maybe so. Well, Ellen, it’s high time you were in bed. Trot along.” Then she took the girl in her arms and gave her a warm kiss, a most unusual thing for Rindy Crump to do.

CHAPTER VIII

ONCE MORE

It was at a church picnic that Ellen discovered who had sent her the flowers at Christmas and she reported her discovery to Miss Rindy that evening.

“Who was that walking home with you?” asked Miss Rindy, who had been on the watch.

“Frank Ives,” returned Ellen promptly. “He was real nice to me at the picnic, and insisted on carrying my basket home, though, goodness knows, it wasn’t heavy.”

“Humph!” was Miss Rindy’s only comment.

“And, Cousin Rindy, I found out who sent me the flowers last Christmas; it was Frank.”

Miss Rindy gave her a keen look, but there was no conscious expression on the girl’s face. “I don’t have much use for those Iveses,” came the comment. “They were poor trash before the war, and now that they have plenty of money they are insufferable in my opinion. The father made his money in the war, cheating the government, I’m told, and they have splurged out and put on airs till I can’t stand the sight of them. The girl’s a painted doll, and the mother isn’t much better.”

“Frank seems rather jolly,” Ellen defended, “and rather like his name,—frank, you know, and not a bit airish.”

“I don’t know anything about the boy, but I’d advise you to keep clear of the whole outfit.”

However, Ellen did not find this easy to do. A crowd of merry young people were in the habit of gathering every evening at Dr. Rowe’s, and, leaving her cousin to hobnob with some of her cronies, Ellen would slip out and run down to Caro, who always met her with open arms. Knowing that Miss Rindy had not the slightest objection to this acquaintance, Ellen felt free to visit Caro whenever she wished. Frank would bring his guitar, and Clyde Fawcett his mandolin. Ellen would lead the singing, and, though the music was not of the highest order, being chiefly about bananas, Alabama coons, and such foolishness, they all enjoyed it, mainly because it was team work and brought forth youthful laughter and merry jokes. Frank fell into the habit of walking home with Ellen, the two always followed by the statement “I was seeing Nellie home,” sung vociferously by those left behind. Frank was a tall, slim youth of eighteen, inclined to be sentimental, lazy, and pleasure loving. One could hardly blame him for cultivating these traits when he had an over-indulgent mother and a father who thought of little except increasing his bank account, and who never checked his children in the pursuit of any of their inclinations, a course not likely to develop strength of character.

Ellen was not long in discovering the fact that Frank was rather a weak brother, but, in spite of this, she liked his evident admiration, and felt flattered that he had selected her above the other girls as the object of his attentions. She was known as “Hazy,” by the rest of the crowd, because Clyde had overheard Frank telling her that she should be called Hazel because of the color of her eyes.

Clyde was a good-natured, practical lad, always joking, making puns, and telling absurd stories. There were sure to be laughter and nonsense where Clyde was, so he was always in demand. Innocent fun it was, and very good for Ellen, who had lived too much with older persons. Miss Rindy, fine as she was, nevertheless did not think she was doing her duty unless she kept her young charge constantly reminded of the necessity of being useful, and of these reminders Ellen wearied many a time.

“I couldn’t help thinking of Cousin Rindy when they sang that hymn this morning,” she said to Jeremy as they were walking home from church one day.

“What hymn?” asked he.

“That one which says, ‘Direct, control, suggest this day all I design or do or say,’” Ellen told him.

He smiled, then chuckled. “Rindy certainly does like to suggest, and isn’t over pleased when you don’t take her suggestions, but then she isn’t the only one who is built that way,” and Ellen knew he was thinking of his own wife, especially when he went on: “There are worse things than being bossed, and one can be thinking one’s own thought during the process of bossing. That is one thing that saves us, Ellen; nobody can control our thoughts.” And Ellen nodded understandingly. After all her lot was an easier one by far than was Jeremy Todd’s.

The long summer days sped all too rapidly. Ellen learned to can, preserve, and pickle, to cultivate vegetables, to do many housewifely things. She sometimes grew impatient under her cousin’s constant suggestions. There was but one way to do a thing, in Miss Rindy’s opinion, and that was her way. But when the situation became too hard for Ellen she always found a refuge in Jeremy, to whom she would unburden herself, and from whom she always received comfort.

“It would do you good to get away for a little while,” he said to her one day when Miss Rindy had been unusually sharp. “A change always clears the atmosphere. It is good for those who go and for those who stay behind. Are there none of your friends in the city with whom you would like to spend a few days?”

“There are several to whom I should like to go, but I have not been invited, in the first place, and then I don’t feel that I should leave Cousin Rindy. Moreover, I’d need new clothes, and where would my railway ticket come from? Oh, no, I have no reason to complain, and I do not exactly; I am just spilling over a little. You are always so beautifully ready to understand, and you don’t go off and repeat what I say. You are a great refuge, Mr. Jeremy Todd.”

“It is well that some one finds me so,” he returned rather grimly.

Ellen ran off to the post-office and brought back the daily paper and one letter for Miss Rindy, which she took and read in silence. Then she sat for a few moments gazing thoughtfully out of the window. Ellen meantime was looking over the paper.

Presently her cousin turned to her and said, “Ellen, how would you like to spend your Christmas in the city with some of your old friends?”

“I’d like it immensely, but there would be my travelling expenses, and I’d hate to go without some new clothes.” Strange that Jeremy Todd should have mentioned the same plan. “Don’t think I mind wearing my old ones here,” she added quickly, “but I haven’t anything very nice for evenings, you know, and my serge suit is getting pretty shabby; I have worn it so much.”

“That is true; I hadn’t thought about the clothes, and I’m afraid we couldn’t afford both clothes and ticket.” Miss Rindy sighed. “Everything is so much higher nowadays that one’s income doesn’t cover more than half what it used to, and the income doesn’t increase with the price of other things. Well, we’ll say no more about it, but just settle down and have our holidays here.”

But, as it turned out, there was a great deal more to be said about it. During the next few days Miss Rindy was rather short and grumpy, railing against high prices, the United States government, and things in general. Just why she was in this bitter mood Ellen could not find out, but it did not make for any great happiness on her part, for it increased her sense of dependence. “Never mind, Cousin Rindy,” she said one day when there had been a particularly sharp tirade against conditions, “I’ll soon be old enough to make my own living, and perhaps I may be able to help you, too.”

Miss Rindy turned on her. “Don’t you ever say such a thing again. As if I were flinging at you. The thing that troubles me is that I can’t give you everything I’d like to.”

“But, think what you do give me——”

“Not another word. Go down and see if there is any mail.”

Ellen went off, and in a short time was back, lugging a large box.

“What in the world have you there?” inquired Miss Rindy.

“That’s just what I don’t know. It is addressed to me, and Mrs. Perry said that as I was the only Ellen North in town it must be for me.”

“Who sent it?”

“No one that I know. Up in the corner it says it is from Mary West, Baltimore, and I don’t know any Mary West in Baltimore or anywhere else.”

“Open it and we may find some explanation inside.”

“It is fairly heavy,” said Ellen. Then she lifted the box to a chair and began tugging at the string, finally loosening it enough to remove the cover. There was a layer of tissue paper on top but nothing in the way of a card or note. Underneath the paper, carefully wrapped in a towel, was a white crêpe de Chine dress. Ellen shook it out and looked at her cousin in wonderment. “Did you ever?” she exclaimed.

Miss Rindy took the dress and began examining it while Ellen turned her attention to the next thing in the box. This was discovered to be a black wool dress with touches of white embroidery upon it; then came a black sport hat with a white ornament upon it, and, last of all, there was a black coat with a big fur collar. At sight of this last Ellen was so overcome that she flung the coat from her and dropped in a heap on the floor while she burst into tears.

“You silly, silly goose,” cried Miss Rindy. “Get up. What in the world are you crying for?”

“I am so afraid they don’t belong to me, and they are so lovely,” Ellen sobbed.

“Find another Ellen North in the town and I’ll admit that they might not belong to you.”

“But there isn’t another, Mrs. Perry said so.”

“Then stop fussing and take the gifts the gods send you. Try on this coat. The things aren’t quite new, but they are just as good, and of finer quality than I could afford. Whoever sent them must have known that it was time you lightened your mourning, for they are exactly right. The coat is a little long, but that can soon be remedied, and the hat looks fine with it. We’d better take everything up-stairs, and you can try on the dresses. My, Ellen, but that box certainly is a godsend.”

“And the only one I can thank for it is God, because I don’t know any Mary West.”

“Well, I wouldn’t bother about it. Probably some of your city friends or some old friend of your mother’s has heard about you, and thought this would be a nice, thoughtful way of serving you.”

Ellen accepted this explanation, although it was not the right one, and went up to try on the dresses, which, with some alterations, Miss Rindy declared would do perfectly.

“I declare,” she said, “if I had picked them out myself I couldn’t have done better. Now you are all ready for the city,” she added with satisfaction.

“But I haven’t been invited.”

“I thought you said you had a standing invitation from that Mrs. Austin.”

“So I had, but it might not be convenient just at this time.”

“Better write and find out; that’s easy to do. What about that Mr. Barstow, your father’s friend?”

“Oh, he is an old bachelor and has a Japanese servant to look after him. He has a most beautiful studio apartment, but of course I couldn’t go there.”

“Of course not, but you could go somewhere, couldn’t you?”

“It seems to me you are very anxious to get rid of me,” said Ellen laughing. “Do you want to get me out of the way so as to do some weird stunt which would make me lose my respect for you?”

“No, but I can tell you the real reason, now that the way has cleared for you to go in proper raiment. I had a letter the other day from my friend, Bertha Martin. We were buddies over there in France, and there is no one I like better. Well, she married before we left, and I was her bridesmaid, the first and only time I ever served in that capacity. She has been begging me to come to see her. Now she is in her own home, and is bent and determined that I should spend Christmas with her, and I confess, Ellen, that I am crazy to go. It wouldn’t cost any more than our keep here, you see.”

“And you were going to stay at home because of me. Oh, Cousin Rindy! I could go to Caro or somebody.”

“I hadn’t thought of that, and besides I’m not going to have you make a convenience of any one. You’d rather go to the city, wouldn’t you?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Then we’ll try to fix it up. I’ll write to Bertha to-day, and you can write to your friend, Mrs. Austin.”

But Ellen decided that it would be better to consult Mr. Barstow, who, as an intimate friend of the Austins, could tell her if a visit would be acceptable to the latter. An answer came by return mail; Ellen was to come right along. Mrs. Austin was writing to urge her not to fail them. They would have a jolly time. Mr. Barstow himself was planning all sorts of things. She wasn’t to fuss over a holiday outfit; they could dress her up in studio properties and call her a lay figure or a model or something like that.

The cheery, cordial letter was very heartening. Once more would Ellen have a share in those things which she loved, in the unconventional way of living, the informal parties, the free-and-easy companionship. The letter from Mrs. Austin gave assurance that she was very much wanted, and she began her preparations with a light heart.

Miss Rindy was almost as excited as Ellen. “I’ll get those frocks altered in short order,” she said. “I think we’d better go over your mother’s trunks and see if there is anything in them that would be useful to you in the city. Now that you are sixteen, Ellen, things would be suitable for you that wouldn’t have been a year or more ago.”

“But what about you? Surely you have something to do for yourself.”

“Not much.”

“You certainly need a new hat, Cousin Rindy. Aren’t you going to get one?”

“No, I am not. Do you think I’m made of money? If Bertha Martin doesn’t like me in my old hat, she can let me alone. She has seen me in a worse rig than any I’m likely to appear in now.”

“You are going to take your lace dress.”

“Yes, I’ll take that, although I always feel guilty about wearing it when I think that you may need it some day.”

“That I never shall. Long before I am old enough to wear it I hope to be able to buy all sorts of splendor.”

“You are very optimistic, I must confess. If you can provide yourself with one decent dress a year, you’ll be doing well.”

“Why discourage me in my high hopes? Thoreau says it is all right to build castles in the air if later you put foundations under them.”

“Humph! I suppose that is some of Jeremy Todd’s talk; sounds like it.”

Ellen did not reply to this, but went up to the attic to look over the trunks. She found a scarf which she decided would make a fine addition to Miss Rindy’s wardrobe, and which would do for a Christmas gift from herself. An ostrich-feather fan she appropriated, and a pair of opera glasses, but these were the only things which she felt would be suitable.

All the time she was rummaging she was thinking about her Cousin Rindy’s hat. “If it were not for paying my travelling expenses she could get one,” Ellen told herself. “I really think I ought to give up my visit and go to Caro’s instead; she wants awfully to have me at Christmas, but, oh, dear! I think I shall pine away if I have to stay here when I am just crazy to get back with that dear old crowd; and yet—and yet—— If I had only promised Caro in the first place, I couldn’t get out of it, and Cousin Rindy could have her visit and a hat, too. Sometimes it is mighty hard to be unselfish. Cousin Rindy never thinks of herself, but I am not so good as she is, and I never shall be.” She sighed, arose from her knees, locked the trunk, and took the things she had selected from it down to her room, but she went around with a soberly thoughtful countenance the rest of the day.

As usual in such cases she took her dilemma to Jeremy Todd. “I’m all fussed up,” she told him. “I don’t feel as if I could possibly allow Cousin Rindy to pay my travelling expenses, and yet I am wild to go to Mrs. Austin’s. If I could only make some excuse to stay here and let Cousin Rindy go, I’d do it, I really would. You needn’t look at me in that quizzical way, Mr. Jeremy Todd. What are you laughing at?”

For Mr. Todd was beginning to chuckle, and the chuckle was growing into a hearty laugh. “I am laughing because things turn out in such a funny manner sometimes. You may not think you were born under a lucky star, you little Ellen North, but I believe you were.”

“What makes you say that?”

“You remember the birthday party, don’t you? Well, a similar condition has arisen. I was called up this very morning by a man in Meadowville,—you remember the little church there. I am wanted to play for a wedding, but as there is to be a wedding in our own church at the same hour, noon, I was thinking of asking you to take the music here while I go to Meadowville. How does the idea strike you?”

“Oh, Mr. Todd, it strikes me so hard that I am nearly knocked flat. It seems like a miracle only——” She stopped short, and the joy died out of her face.

“What’s the matter now, sprained your thumb, or what?”

“Oh, no, I’m not incapacitated, but I told you last time that I was not going to take your place unless you received what is rightfully yours, the fee.”

“So just for a matter of silly pride you would throw away a good five dollars which I could not have anyhow, since I cannot be in two places at the same time. I thought better of you, Ellen North, after all Rindy Crump’s training. All right, I’ll get Sophy Bennett to give the music here; she will never refuse the fee, I can assure you.”

“Oh, Mr. Todd, don’t get her; she plays so execrably.”

“Nobody else; it must be you or her.”

“Then I give in. I accept the offer gratefully. A great load is lifted. Thank you a thousand times.”

“Don’t thank me. It is purely a matter of accommodation. I shall have a much better time at the Meadowville wedding. They will make much of me, and will invite me to the wedding feast, something I should not expect here.”

“What is the date? I forgot to ask.”

“A week before Christmas. The bridal couple in each case want to take a wedding trip, and be back in time to celebrate Christmas at home.”

Ellen gave a long sigh of satisfaction. “I was born under a lucky star, I do believe,” she said.

So after all Ellen paid her own travelling expenses, Miss Rindy had a new hat, and both started off in high feather after locking up the house and leaving Wipers to the tender mercies of the Dove-Hales.

CHAPTER IX

STUDIO DOINGS

“So here we have our little girl back again,” cried Mr. Barstow as he came gaily into the Austins’ studio on the evening of Ellen’s arrival. “Welcome back to the old ‘haunches,’ as old Potter used to say. Let’s look at you. Grown? I should say so. Almost a young lady, but she keeps her lovely coloring, doesn’t she, Mrs. Austin? Now sit down here and tell us all that you have been doing down there in the country. Milking the cows, feeding the pigs, and all that?”

“I’ve fed nothing but the cat, and I haven’t learned to milk, but I can do a lot of other things.” She ran over a list of her accomplishments in the domestic line.

“Great Cæsar! they certainly have been keeping you at it. Good thing, though. When Kogi gets obstreperous I’ll know where to send for a cook. I tell you what we’ll do; we’ll have a spree at my studio some day. I’ll send Kogi off, and you and Mrs. Austin can come over and cook all over the place. What do you consider your chef-d’œuvre?”

“I can make a pretty good omelet, and Cousin Rindy has shown me how to prepare some of the dishes she learned about over in France.”

“Fine! We’ll count on the omelet, and you can think up the other things meanwhile. We’re going to celebrate at my studio on Christmas Eve, you know. All the old crowd will be there, and we shall do our prettiest to have some fun. Now I must be off. Don’t forget, Connie, Christmas Eve. Come early.” He put his head over the top of the screen behind which Mrs. Austin was at work, waved his hand to Ellen, and dashed out.

“May I come see what you are doing?” asked Ellen as the door closed behind Mr. Barstow.

“No, no,” answered Mrs. Austin. “I am finishing your Christmas gift, and wouldn’t have you see it for the world. I must take advantage of the daylight, you know, and there is so little left.”

“A Christmas gift for me! Oh, Mrs. Austin, you shouldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because this visit is a fine enough present.”

“But, don’t you see, you are giving me the visit, and I must do something for you.”

“That is one way to look at it,” Ellen answered. “According to my point of view it is I who receive from you.”

“Well, never mind, don’t let’s talk about it. You’ll get me all fussed up. You go find a book or something to amuse you. There are some magazines over on the big table. When Phil comes in we’ll decide whether we’ll have a delicatessen dinner here or go out somewhere. Make yourself comfortable.”

This delightful lack of ceremony exactly suited Ellen. She wandered around the room for a few minutes, looked at the sketches on the walls, and finally curled herself up on a big couch by the window, to look out upon the familiar streets. One by one the lights flashed out from the tall buildings and from the street lamps, then brilliant signs began to appear, crowds hurried home, elevated trains rumbled along near by, automobiles honked, the siren of a fire engine wailed its warning, while Ellen’s thoughts travelled back to the dear departed days of which all these sights and sounds only too vividly reminded her. She covered her face with her hands as the tears began to gather.

Presently Mrs. Austin came and sat down beside her. She drew her close. “I know, little girl, I know. It is very hard, but we want to give you such a good time while you are here that you will remember that rather than the sad time back of it. We are all such busy people that you may have thought we were forgetting you, but we haven’t forgotten, and we are always going to keep you in our hearts. There comes Phil; let’s see what he wants to do about dinner.”

Mr. Austin came in laden with packages. He was a tall, spare man with near-sighted brown eyes, a pointed Vandyke beard, sandy hair, and a nervous mouth. He had an absent-minded way of looking at you as if he saw not you but a vision. He had met Ellen at the train, delivered her to his wife, and then had gone off to his club.

“I thought it would be rather nice to have a snack here,” he said as he laid the packages on the table. “I was away down-town on Fulton Street to look at that work of Kean’s, so I went over to that Spanish place and got some of those things you like, Connie,—that nougat stuff, and some dandy little cakes.”

“Cakes and candy won’t make a very hearty dinner for Ellen, I’m afraid.”

“But, bless you, child, I got those at the Spanish grocer’s, I told you. Then on my way from the subway I loaded up at the delicatessen.”

“You’re a good child, Phil. I don’t know what I should do without you. Let’s see what you have. Sliced ham, cheese, potato salad, rolls, canned peaches;” she mentioned the articles as she drew them forth from the big bag. “I’ll open a can of soup, and we shall do very well. If we get hungry before bedtime, we can have a cup of chocolate. You and Ellen can set the table, Phil, while I get the soup ready.”

Mr. Austin swept the books and papers from the largest table, and laid some queer-looking mats upon it while Ellen went for the dishes. There were no two of these alike, and when it came time to serve the peaches the soup plates had to be washed, as there was nothing else in which to put them. However, they had a jolly meal and Ellen enjoyed the informality.

“It does so remind me of the old days,” she sighed.

“I thought it might, and that you would like it,” said Mr. Austin.

“But we don’t mean that you shall always eat in this higgledy-piggledy way,” declared Mrs. Austin.

“It’s fun, and I like it,” Ellen assured her.

The dishes were scarcely out of the way before visitors from the neighboring studios dropped in, and the familiar art patter began. One or more brought sketches which were set up and commented upon with much gesture of thumbs and heated discussion. Ellen listened to it all with glowing appreciation, and when the talk became an exchange of witticisms, she withdrew herself farther and farther away from the dull little town she had left. This was the life. Nobody had such good times as these care-free artists.

Later Mrs. Austin made chocolate and brought out the cakes and nougat, which were consumed to the uttermost crumb. There were not enough cups for the chocolate, but anything did,—tumblers, mugs, even two small pitchers,—and as for spoons, who wanted them when there were clean sticks of charcoal handy?

It was nearly midnight before the company dispersed, and then Ellen was put to bed on the couch, her coverings eked out by a Navajo blanket taken down from the wall, and she went to sleep with the moonlight streaming in through the skylight, picking out the gilt on the hilts of a pair of swords, and causing the glass eyes of a simpering lay figure to stare at her uncannily.

Mrs. Austin was in hiding behind the screen most of the next day, but she emerged in time to scramble together some sort of lunch made up of the odds and ends left over from the night before. Mr. Austin was out nearly all day, so Ellen, left to herself, sallied forth to hunt up some of her old friends. She was so late getting back that she found Mr. and Mrs. Austin waiting for her.

“We feared you were lost,” said Mrs. Austin. “We thought we’d go somewhere and get a light supper. Mr. Barstow is sure to have a big feast in the course of the evening, so we must save our appetites for that. Are you going to wear that dress, Ellen? If you are not, skurry into another one.”

“We should dress up, I suppose.”

“Oh, yes, this is a gala occasion. Put on your very flossiest.”

Ellen, eager to wear the white crêpe, lost no time in getting into it, and appeared promptly to exhibit herself to her hostess.

“What a lovely dress!” she exclaimed. “You look perfectly dear in it. Did you get it in Marshville?”

“Well, yes, I did and I didn’t. Do you know a Mary West, from Baltimore, Mrs. Austin?”

“Never heard of the lady. Who is she?”

“I don’t know, and thought perhaps you could tell me.” Then she related the tale of the mysterious box, giving Miss Rindy’s theory regarding the sender.

Mrs. Austin was interested at once. “Whoever she is, she has mighty good taste,” she declared. “I noticed what a swagger coat and hat you had as soon as I set my eyes on you, and that pretty wool dress you have been wearing is quite out of the common,—nothing you could pick up on a bargain counter. Come along, honey child, I am very proud of you. Phil is pacing the studio like a caged lion, so we’d better not tarry.”

They took their meal at a French pastry shop near by, and then went on to Mr. Barstow’s studio which was not far away. They found their host dancing around in great excitement. He was a little wiry man with a bald head, dark eyes, large nose, and humorous mouth. He grabbed Ellen’s hands and danced her across the floor to where a table was littered with paper and string.

“Come, help me tie up my presents,” he cried. “I haven’t them near ready. You come, too, Connie. Phil can amuse himself by tying them on the tree as we get them done. He is so tall we won’t need a stepladder. Reed Marshall and I trimmed the tree last night. Know Reed? Nice boy. He went out a while ago, but he’ll be back; said he had to go, though I did expect he would help me with these things.”

They all fell to work, and by the time the first guest arrived the last package was tied on the tree. Then the company trooped in, singly, in couples, and in groups till the big studio was gay with bright costumes and lively with chatter.

The fun began when Mr. Barstow mounted the model stand and started to dance an Irish jig, which he did with great agility. Then Mr. Austin’s tall form made its way through the crowd, and, standing by the dancer, this man with the dreamy eyes and solemn face sang an absurd Irish song which nobody could possibly have suspected him of being able to do. The performance brought forth shouts of laughter and wild applause.

Scarcely had these two performers stepped down than some one dashed into the room, turned a handspring upon the model stand, then stood grinning at the company and rolling his eyes comically. He was blackened up and wore the exaggerated dress of a negro minstrel. Presently he burst out into a weird melody with fanciful words and peculiar rhythm; this he followed with a double shuffle. It was all so cleverly done that some could scarce believe it was not a veritable negro before them.

“Where did you get him? Is he a real darkey?” some one asked Mr. Barstow.

“Get him? I didn’t get him; he came. It is that rascal, Reed Marshall. He insisted that he must go when I wanted him to stay. Now I see what he was up to. He said he’d come back and help; he’s doing it. Go to it, boy,” he called out. “Give us a buck and wing. Keep it up.” The order was obeyed, the youth showing such a knowledge of his steps that the applause was loud and long. As soon as it was over the young man made his way to where Mr. Barstow stood with Ellen.

“Well, Uncle Pete,” he said, “I told you I’d be back to help, and here I am. Did I put it over all right?”

“You sure did, son,” returned Mr. Barstow, smiling. “Come here, Reed; I want to present you to Miss Ellen North. She is the daughter of one of my old cronies, just as you are the son of another. Now make yourself agreeable to Ellen while I go hunt up Steve Kendall; he is going to play Santa Claus. You may not recognize Reed when you meet him again, Ellen, but that’s no matter. His get-up doesn’t affect his character at all, nor go so far as to color his speech.”

He went off, and the young man sat down by Ellen on the divan. He looked at her with a smile that resembled a grin because of the dark surroundings of his white teeth.

“We should be friends because we are both children of cronies; you are a cronette and I am a cronine. I shall call you Cronette, henceforth. Isn’t Uncle Pete the jolly little playmate? Have you known him long?”

“Oh, yes, always. He and my father were students together in Spain, and Daddy always called him Don Pedro, which is what I call him. Where did you learn to do those dances?”

“Down on de Easte’n Sho. Das whar I comes from, chile. Is you a dancer, Sis’ Cronette?”

Ellen laughed. “I used to be, but since I have been living in Marshville I haven’t had much chance to do anything so frivolous. My cousin with whom I live believes in making me practical. The utilitarian alone appeals to her.”

“So Useful is your front name.”

“Exactly: Useful Ellen.”

“I like Cronette better. Say, I’d like mighty well to paint you. Can you give me a chance? Your coloring goes to my head. Will you sit for me?”

“I’m afraid I can’t during these holidays. You see I am visiting Mrs. Austin, and she has planned out all sorts of things for me to do while I am here. You’d better ask her.”

“So I do, Sis’ Cronette, an’ efen it please her sagacity, I sho mek a little one o’ dese yer studies.”

“You are an artist, then?”

“Trying to be. I goes to de League, an’ some o’ dese days I’se gwine to Eu’ope. Yuh been to Eu’ope, Sis’ Cronette?”

“I came near it, but I never got there.”

“Huccome?”

“My mother and I were going over to join my father, but he came home to—to die. He was wounded and gassed, you know.”

The grin faded from Reed’s face. “I didn’t know, but I do know that he was a mighty good artist. I’ve always liked his work tremendously.”

“Oh, I am so glad. You have seen it here?”

“Yes, you know Uncle Pete has a lot of his pictures packed away. He means to have an exhibition of them some day with some of his own work.”

“My mother always hoped that could be done sometime. Dear Don Pedro, it is like him to want to do that.”

“Here comes Santa Claus. We’d better go over and see what he has for us.”

So Ellen, escorted by the grotesque figure, crossed the room to where the tree, now lighted up by many colored electric bulbs, was fast becoming surrounded by the company.

There was a gift, and sometimes more than one, for each person. “I can scarcely wait to see your present to me,” Ellen whispered to Mrs. Austin. She did not have to wait long, for in a few minutes Santa Claus handed her a small box which she opened immediately, to see smiling up at her the pictured face of her own mother, painted upon ivory. It was as much as the girl could do to choke back the tears, but she did, and had barely whispered her thanks when her name was again called, and another box was passed over to her. This contained a string of crystal beads, Mr. Austin’s gift, which she at once decided to wear.

“May I see the miniature?” asked Reed at her elbow.

“Mrs. Austin painted it; you know that miniatures are her specialty, and there is nothing in the world I would rather have,” Ellen told him. “It is such a good likeness of my dear mother.”

The young man looked at it earnestly. “I don’t wonder you treasure it,” he said, “and——”

But here he was interrupted by Mr. Barstow, who came up with a large package which he laid in Ellen’s arms, saying: “I wanted to give you this myself. It was your father’s, and I want you to have it.”

Ellen eagerly undid the string and took off the wrappings. “Oh, Don Pedro, Don Pedro!” she breathed. “Daddy’s violin, and you are giving it to me? But I shouldn’t take it; it is too valuable.”

“Not too valuable for dear old Gerry’s daughter. No, child, I want you to take it. All the better that it is valuable, for if you get into a hole some day you can sell it.”

“Let me know when you reach the hole,” spoke up Reed. “I always have been crazy about that violin, haven’t I, Uncle Pete? It has a most wonderful tone.”

“Then you have played on it.”

“Often.”

“Then play a farewell.” She gave the violin into his hands and he drew the bow across the strings, tuned up, and played the simple air of “Holy Night.” Then he handed back the instrument “Now you,” he said.

“I know only one thing very well,” she announced, and began the melody she had played at the birthday party. “Dear old Jeremy Todd taught me that,” she said as she ended.

“Jeremy Todd? You don’t mean to say you know old Jeremy?” exclaimed Mr. Barstow. “Where did you run across him? I’ve not seen him or heard of him for years. Used to know him well. What’s become of him, and why doesn’t he show up? Lots of talent. We all believed he would make his mark.”

Ellen gave such information as she could, Mr. Barstow listening attentively, and at the close shaking his head and saying, “Poor old chap! Poor old Jeremy! I’d like mighty well to see him again.”

But here entered Kogi with a great tray, and Mr. Barstow skipped off to see that the refreshments were served properly. Delicious they were and of great variety, so abundant, too, that it is a wonder that any one was able to join in the carols with which the evening ended.

Ellen went off hugging her violin, for the gift of which she had hugged and kissed the giver. “Dear Don Pedro,” she whispered, “I can never thank you enough for this. It has been such a wonderful evening altogether. I shall remember it to my dying day.”

Reed Marshall followed her to the street. “If it wasn’t for this rig I sure would see you home, Cronette, but I’m coming to see you. Mrs. Austin says I may, but she won’t make any promises about the sittings, for she says she is chock-full of engagements for you, and I shall just have to take my chances.”

“I’d really like to see what you look like in your true character,” said Ellen laughing. “I feel sort of queer about you, as if you were not a real somebody.”

“I’ll convince you that I am, at the very first opportunity.”

But Mr. and Mrs. Austin were waiting, so Ellen ran on to join them, and they walked briskly home with the music of the Christmas carols still ringing in their ears.

CHAPTER X

BRIGHT DAYS AND DARK ONES

Although Reed Marshall kept his promise of coming to see Ellen, not once was she at home when he called, which he did several times. All through that holiday week there was something going on, for it seemed that the old friends outdid themselves in their efforts to give Ellen pleasure. There were teas, luncheons and theatre parties, musicales, concerts, and, if nothing else offered, there were trips to the picture galleries, so that the girl’s time was entirely taken up, and when the hour of her departure struck she knew no more what Reed looked like than if she had never seen him. Indeed it is not surprising that he passed out of her memory almost entirely when two surprising incidents took place almost at the same time.

It was at one of the studios on the day before New Year’s that Ellen noticed a pretty girl looking at her with evident interest. Music was going on; some one was singing. Ellen waited till the song was over before she whispered to Mrs. Austin: “Do you know who that girl is, the one in purple, sitting by Mrs. Everleigh? She has been staring at me as if I were a curiosity.”

“Never saw her before that I know of. We’ll find out directly, when the music is over and we have tea.”

That moment arrived before long. Mrs. Austin arose. “You stay here and I’ll go find out about the purple girl.”

She had no sooner gone than the purple girl herself came and took the chair Mrs. Austin had vacated. “Would you mind telling me your name?” she said. “I came in late, and in such a crowd of course one doesn’t wait for introductions. I am Mabel Wickham, Mrs. Everleigh’s niece.”

“I am Ellen North,” was the prompt reply.

“Not Ellen North from Marshville?” Miss Wickham leaned closer while an amused look crept into her eyes as they travelled from Ellen’s hat to her dress and then to the coat which hung over the back of a chair in front of the two. “Is that your coat?” came the abrupt question. “Oh, I beg your pardon for being so rude. I have no right to ask such questions. Did you say you lived in Marshville?”

Ellen hadn’t said so, but she answered: “Yes, I live there. Is that where you have seen me? Do you know the place?”

“Never was there in my life, but——” She was no longer able to keep back her laughter, though presently she bit her lip and tried to look politely serious. “You really must excuse me. I must seem a perfect idiot, but I keep thinking of something so funny that it makes me laugh.”

At this moment she spied a handkerchief lying on the floor, which she picked up and began to examine. Ellen meantime searched for the one she now missed. “I think that must be mine,” she said; “it fell out of my lap, I suppose.”

“I am afraid you are mistaken,” rejoined Miss Wickham. “See, it bears my initials, and, besides, has my private mark, a black dot in the corner, a very tiny one, to be sure, but there it is.”

It was Ellen’s turn to stare; then suddenly came illumination. “You are Mary West!” she cried. “I know you are, and that is why you have been looking at me so hard; it is because of the hat and dress. You recognize them, but why is your name Mabel Wickham, and how did you know about me?”

Miss Wickham was silent for a moment. “You won’t be mad if I tell you? I’ll ’fess up, though I know you will be absolutely convinced that I am the idiot I seem to be.”

“Mad? I’m only delighted that I have a chance to thank the good fairy who sent me that box and made it possible for me not to mortify my friends here when I came to visit them. Do please tell me all about it.”

“Well, it was done in the manner of a joke, I was going out of mourning, and had already given away a lot of things to perfectly ungrateful, unappreciative persons, so I thought I’d do something unusual. I packed a few things in a box to go off just anywhere, I didn’t care where. Then I thought up a nice ordinary name. Ellen seemed to please me, but Ellen—what? I stood up, shut my eyes, and turned around two or three times. When I opened them I was facing north. Ellen North, said I, a good sensible name, so I wrote that on the box. Then it occurred to me that the name of the sender would be required. I took my own initials; Mary would do for Mabel, and, as points of the compass were in order, West would do for Wickham. The next question was where to send it. I opened a map, shut my eyes again, and plumped my finger down anywhere. It happened to fall on Marshville, so there you are. I know you must think me the silliest, most fanciful person in the world, but I enjoyed the game and sent out my box into the unknown, wondering what would happen to it, and if any one would get it.”

“It is like a real Christmas fairy tale,” declared Ellen, “and a lovely one for me. I don’t see how you thought of doing that way; yes, I do, though, for I just love to use my imagination, and I am pleased to pieces to think the things came my way just as if a fairy godmother had brought them in a pumpkin-shell chariot.”

“Oh, you dear thing! I just love your saying that. I believe we are going to be friends. I don’t have many friends because so many people are stupid; at least, they think my flights of fancy are just crazy foolishness. Perhaps I am as stupid as they because it isn’t yet through my noddle how you happened to guess I was Mary West.”

“Because of the handkerchief, you see. It was such a nice fine one. I found it in the pocket of the coat and so I used it. Don’t you see?”

Miss Wickham opened her bag and produced a handkerchief exactly like the one she had picked up from the floor. “Twins!” she exclaimed. “But, oh, dear, you are minus a handkerchief if I keep this one; that will not do.”

“Please don’t bother. I had several for Christmas, beauties, from Mr. Barstow’s Christmas tree.”

“But you will need this before you can get at the others. You can borrow it.”

“I’ll be glad to, and I’ll send it to you properly laundered. Shall you be here long, or are you going back to Baltimore?”

“How do you know that Baltimore is my home?”

“It was on the box; ‘Mary West, Baltimore.’”

“Of course; I had forgotten. I shall be at Mrs. Everleigh’s for another week, and I do hope we shall meet again before you leave. May I come to Mrs. Austin’s to see you?”

“Indeed you may, though I am to be here but a couple of days longer; then, ‘back to the mines.’”

“O dear! I do want to know you better and to hear all about you——”

But here Mrs. Everleigh came up. “Time to go, Mabel,” she said. “Didn’t you girls want any tea? I saw you two talking away for dear life, as if you were old and tried friends.”

“Well, we are in a measure,” replied Mabel. “Ellen knows some intimate acquaintances of mine.” The two girls exchanged glances and laughed.

“What’s the joke?” inquired Mrs. Everleigh curiously.

“Just a little private one. You’ll take me to the Austins’ studio, won’t you, Auntie?”

“Yes, if you’ll come along now. We must be getting home.”

They made their farewells to Ellen and moved away, Mabel losing no time in making inquiries about this new acquaintance, but saying no word about the box.

Ellen, too, was prompt in hunting up Mrs. Austin and learning what she might about Mabel.

“I found out about your purple girl,” said Mrs. Austin, “though, from the way you two jabbered away like magpies, I don’t suppose there is much you haven’t learned.”

“I didn’t learn so very much,” declared Ellen, “but we found out that we have many things in common. Tell me about her, please.”

“She is a very wealthy girl, lives in Baltimore with her grandmother. Her mother died when she was but a small child, and her father a few years ago. Mrs. Everleigh is her aunt. I believe the girl is considered rather peculiar, doesn’t care for society, a grave fault in the grandmother’s eyes, who, like many Baltimoreans, prefers the social whirl and the good things of life rather than the intellectual ones. Mrs. Everleigh says her niece lives in a world of her own to which but few are admitted. You liked her, Ellen?”

“Very much, and she wants to come to see me.”

However, the girls were not destined to meet again at this time, for upon Ellen’s arrival at the studio there was a telegram for her which meant an early start for home the next morning. The telegram read: “Have had an accident. Come at once. Orinda Crump.”

It was an unhappy beginning of the new year. The lonely, wearisome railway journey full of apprehension, the regrets for the good times that the day was to have afforded, the fears for what might be looked for in the future, all these brought a nervous, overwrought girl to Marshville.

As she stepped from the train she looked around for some one to give her news of Miss Rindy, and, to her relief, saw Dr. Rowe, who came up at once. “Well, Ellen,” was his greeting, “I was watching for you. Come right with me; my car is waiting.”

“Cousin Rindy, tell me, Doctor, what has happened to her?”

“Nothing that she won’t recover from, although it makes it pretty bad for the present She fell and broke her hip yesterday morning.”

“She is at home of course. Who is with her?”

“It seemed best that she should go to the hospital, in fact she insisted upon it,—said she couldn’t afford trained nurses and all that. I took her myself.”

“But hospitals cost a lot.”

“Sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t.” The doctor was non-committal. “I am going to take you there now. Rindy wants to see you, I know. I sent the telegram in her name, though she didn’t want to have it sent at all; said she didn’t want to break up your visit.”

“That’s just like her; she never thinks of herself. Will she have to stay at the hospital for a long time?”

“That depends. I told her not to be troubled about you, for you can stay with us. Caro is entranced at the thought. I shall be going over to the hospital every day and can take you along, for she will want to see you that often.”

“And I shall want to see her. How good you are, Doctor. Does she suffer much?”

“She did at first, and will when she begins to exercise again, but she is fairly comfortable now.”

It was a ride of but a few miles to the hospital, and soon Ellen was following the doctor through a long corridor to the room where Miss Rindy was. A white-gowned nurse met them at the door. “How is the patient?” inquired the doctor.

“Doing very well,” was the reply.

The doctor beckoned to Ellen, who was soon looking down upon the pale face of her cousin. “Well, Ellen,” was the greeting, “this is a pretty how-do-you-do, isn’t it? I could kick myself for a clumsy old fool. No, I couldn’t either, not with one leg out of commission. I want you to get some of my things that I shall need, for goodness knows how long I may have to stick here. Go over there, Sam Rowe, and talk to the nurse; I have things to say to Ellen.”

The doctor nodded understandingly to the nurse and the two went toward the door while Ellen drew up a chair close to the bed. “Now, listen,” began Miss Rindy. “I’m not going to stay in this expensive room. It is all nonsense. I am no better than lots of others in the free ward, and not half so good as some. Look at the way our boys had to endure privations and discomforts in hurry-up hospitals over there. I reckon I can stand what they did. Sam Rowe won’t listen to me, but I want you to impress upon him that I cannot pay for this room and a private nurse. He has got to understand it. You tell him so. Now, take that bit of paper and write down the list of things I want.”

Ellen did as she was bid, glad that she had made no promise of persuading the doctor to move her cousin. She had no more than finished her list than the doctor came over to the bed. “I think we’ve stayed long enough for this time, Ellen,” he said. “I’ll bring her again to-morrow, Rindy. She is going to stay with us, so you needn’t worry a bit about her.”

“Maybe you think I have nothing else to worry about, Sam Rowe. You’ll be wishing me a happy New Year next, I suppose. A nice year I have ahead of me, haven’t I? The best I can expect is that I shall be able to go around on crutches, but I am not going to end my days hobbling. When I get into my death bed I mean to walk there.”

“Good sport!” cried the doctor. “That’s the way to talk. You may have to begin with crutches, but I venture to say you won’t end with them. See you to-morrow, Rindy.”

“Ellen hasn’t told me a word about her visit,” complained Miss Rindy.

“Time enough for that,” called back the doctor.

“Don’t you forget what I told you, Ellen,” Miss Rindy charged as her visitors went out the door.

Ellen was almost in tears as they drove away. “It is so pitiful to see her laid up like that,” she said. “She has always been so active and capable. Will she ever walk again, Doctor?”

“To be sure she will, though not for some time, but she has the perseverance and courage of a dozen women to see her through. She may not be quite so active, but she is young enough to get back a lot of her powers.”

“She vows she is not going to stay in that room, that she must go into the free ward,” said Ellen after a silence.

“That’s all nonsense! The idea of Rindy Crump going into the free ward. She must stay right where she is. To-morrow I shall tell her that she can’t be moved because it will only retard her recovery, that there is no room in the free ward, anything at all to keep her satisfied.”

“But she’ll not be satisfied. She has a horror of debt, and will worry over the expense.”

“She mustn’t worry. What about those rich relatives of hers? Can’t they come to the fore?”

“She’d rather die than appeal to them.”

“What about her brother? It surely is time he was doing something for her, after all she has done for him.”

“She never hears from him. I believe he is in Seattle and doing well.”

“Humph! Somebody ought to let him know the state of affairs and at least give him a chance to wipe out some of his obligations. I notice that most persons are mighty eager to accept help, but are ready to give aid to anybody except those who came to their assistance. It is a queer twist in human nature.”

Ellen thought over this statement and immediately took it to heart, determining that she would never be one of that class. She spoke her thought openly. “I hope the day will come when I can show Cousin Rindy how much I appreciate all she has done for me. I wish I could do it now.”

“Don’t you worry about the present. We’ll fix it up somehow. Rindy has too many good friends in this town to let her suffer.”

“O dear! But she couldn’t stand being an object of charity.”

“She needn’t be. I suppose it would be allowable to lend her what is required, and let her pay in her own good time.”

Ellen was silent, although she knew that nothing would fret her cousin more than the knowledge of a debt hanging over her. They had arrived at the doctor’s by now, and Caro was on the watch for her beloved Ellen.

“I am so thrilled,” she exclaimed, “to think I am to have you right here under the same roof with me. Of course I’m awfully sorry for poor Miss Rindy, but at the same time I can’t but be happy that anything has happened to bring you back sooner, and, better still, to bring you to us.”

Ellen could not meet this exuberance with like enthusiasm, but she responded as well as she could, and went in to the excellent dinner, Caro’s arm embracing her waist, and Mrs. Rowe ready with a hearty welcome.

There were a good many New Year’s callers that afternoon and evening, for Marshville was still old-fashioned enough to keep up this custom, and Ellen found herself called upon to be chief entertainer, as every one demanded a full account of her visit to the city. She must exhibit the miniature of her mother, the crystal beads, and the rest of her gifts to the satisfaction and admiration of her girl friends, so really she quite enjoyed herself, and was not so cast down as she had expected to be.

“What clever, clever friends you have,” sighed Sally Cooper, “painters and musicians and all that. Do any of them compose, Ellen?”

Ellen looked puzzled. “Do you mean write music?”

“No, I meant do they compose stories, novels, and things?”

Ellen bit her lip and glanced across the room at Clyde Fawcett, who grinned an appreciation of Sally’s would-be elegance. “I believe some of those I met do write. I know one or two are journalists and others are contributors to the magazines,” was the answer.

“How wonderful!” sighed Sally. “I expect we seem very commonplace to you. That Christmas Eve party must have been such fun, and wasn’t it romantic to talk all evening to the boy who blacked up, and never find out what he looked like?”

“I’ll bet he looked like an ape,” broke in Frank Ives gruffly. Frank, by the way, had brought Ellen an ornate box of candy, large in size and delectable as to contents. She was glad to pass it around, and one may be sure that there was not much left by the time the evening was over.

“You must be worn to a frazzle, you poor darling,” said Caro as the door closed after the last guest. “You haven’t had a moment for rest. Now please sleep as late as you feel like in the morning and I’ll bring up your breakfast.”

“You are a dear, thoughtful thing, Caro,” said Ellen, bestowing a kiss upon her friend’s glowing cheek. “I don’t expect to sleep late, for I promised Cousin Rindy that I would go over to the house and get some things to take out to her, and your father says we shall go as soon as his office hours are over.”

“Need you go? Dad could take them.”

“Oh, but I must go. I want to see Cousin Rindy, and she would be so disappointed if I failed to come.”

“Well, I am not going to keep you up. I want you to go right to sleep.” This remark showed great consideration on Caro’s part, for she had been counting on one of those confidential talks which girls so love to indulge in at bedtime, but her love rose above her desire, and she left her friend without the prolonged good-night that would have pleased her.

But Ellen did not go right to sleep. In this first quiet moment her thoughts rioted. There was so much to consider, to plan, to execute. Uppermost was the consideration of Miss Rindy’s position. It was all so difficult. For all the doctor had told her not to worry, she knew that she must, for no one could realize so well what debt meant to Miss Rindy. “Of course we can scrimp and save,—we shall have to,—but it will be a long, uphill pull. If only I could think of some way to earn enough.”

She lay with wide-open eyes, staring into the dark; then all at once she sat up, as a brilliant idea came to her. “Of course,” she exclaimed, “that would fix it. Why didn’t I think of it before?” Then she lay down, turned over, and in a few minutes was fast asleep.

CHAPTER XI

THE VIOLIN

There was no lying abed for Ellen the next morning. There were things to be done, and to be done quickly, so she lost no time in getting ready immediately after breakfast to go to her cousin’s house.

“I don’t see why you are in such a hurry,” complained Caro. “If you will wait a while, I can go with you. Mother wants to try on the dress I am to wear to Florence’s party this evening. Of course you will go, Ellen.”

“Oh, but I am not invited.”

“That is because Florence didn’t know you would be here. When she knows you are visiting me of course she will expect you.”

Ellen shook her head. “I don’t think so. Moreover, I really don’t feel in the humor for going; I am tired after all the excitement of the past week.”

“Well, maybe you’ll change your mind before night. I do want you to go with me.”

Ellen did not reply, but hurried off. It was a crisp, bright morning. Snow, which had fallen a few days before, still lay in little heaps on the spots untouched by the sun. As Ellen turned the key in the door Wipers bounded to meet her from a warm corner where he had been curled up. She stooped to stroke him, and then entered the chilly house. It was very still and desolate, windows barred and lower rooms dark. Ellen did not tarry on the lower floor, but mounted the stairs to her own room, leaving her violin on the hall table.

How cold and silent it was, yet the sun was streaming in, and, as she looked around at the familiar objects, she realized that this was home and that she was glad to get back to it. She busied herself for a time in putting together the things Miss Rindy had asked for, and when these were ready she went back to her own room, took out her writing materials, and sat thoughtfully looking out the window. She had kept on her coat, so she decided that she would not take cold if she remained long enough to write the note, which was an important one. How should she begin it? Should she say “My dear Reed,” “Dear Cronine,” or “My dear Mr. Marshall”? Finally she decided that as this was a strictly business matter she would best be as formal as possible; therefore she wrote:

“MY DEAR MR. MARSHALL:

“If you were in earnest about wanting my father’s violin if I ever wished to part with it, I am ready to offer it to you. The hole is quite a deep one, otherwise I could not think of giving up dear Mr. Barstow’s Christmas gift; you remember that he said I could sell it if ever I was in a hole, so I must do it now.”

She read over carefully what she had written, and then added:

“Please don’t think you must take the violin if you don’t want it. Perhaps you spoke on the spur of the moment, and didn’t really mean me to take you seriously.”

She hesitated a moment before signing her name. Then she slipped the note into the envelope, and began the address: “Mr. Reed Marshall.” Suddenly she realized that she did not know where the young man lived. “I shall have to send it in Mr. Barstow’s care,” she soliloquized, “and I ought to write to him and explain. It wouldn’t do to sell his gift without telling him why I am doing it.”

She wrote another note, enclosed the one to Reed, and felt that the matter was concluded. “It can go off in the evening mail, and he should get it to-morrow,” she told herself. “I should have an answer in a few days.”

By this time her fingers were stiff with cold, and, as there was no reason why she should linger, she hurried off, bearing the bag containing her cousin’s belongings and her violin. The latter she wanted to show to Jeremy Todd, but just as she was about to turn in at his gate she saw him ahead of her, and hastened to catch up with him. This, however, she did not do till he had reached the church, where he turned in.

Ellen was right at his heels as he fitted the big key in the door. “Happy New Year, Mr. Jeremy Todd!” she greeted him.

He flung open the door, and held out both hands. “Well, this is a surprise,” he cried. “When did you get in? Have you seen Rindy? How is she?”

“I got in yesterday and went right out to the hospital. Cousin Rindy is doing as well as one could expect, but of course she worries. May I come in with you? I have such a lot to tell you, and I want to consult you about something. You know I am nothing if not a consulter.”

“Come right in and tell me all about it. We certainly have missed you, child. It made me feel very lonesome to see the house next door shut up and deserted.”

They entered the church and seated themselves near the organ. Then Ellen poured forth her tale, concluding with: “So, you see, Mr. Todd, here is my chance to do something for Cousin Rindy, something really worth while. Of course I am sorry to give up dear Daddy’s violin, but I am not used yet to owning it, so it is better to give it up before it becomes harder to do. It will be a comfort to think that it is in the hands of one who will treasure it, that is, if he really does want it. Besides, I am not expecting to be a violinist.”

“And this young man is?”

“Why, he must be of a sort, although he is studying to be an artist he told me. Funny I never thought to ask him to try the violin again. I saw him only once, you know. I want you to try it and tell me what you think of it.” She took it from its case and handed it over to him.

He handled it reverently, tuned it, and played a few measures. “It is a very fine instrument,” he assured her, “and should be worth a big price.”

“As much as a hundred dollars?” asked Ellen eagerly.

“It is worth more, though perhaps you may not get anything beyond that. I wish it were my privilege to afford to buy it.”

“But you will keep it for me, won’t you, till Reed wants it? I would be so glad if you would take charge of it.”

“Why not keep it yourself?”

Ellen shook her head. “No, the longer I have it the harder it will be to part with it. I know it will be safe in your hands, and perhaps you will like to play on it sometimes.”

“That I surely will. This Mr. Barstow of whom you speak, is his name Peter, by any chance?”

“It is indeed, and he knows you. He was so glad when I could tell him about you; said he was going to write to you.”

“My old friend, Don Pedro; well, well.”

“Oh, do you call him that? So did Daddy, and I do when I am with him. Reed calls him Uncle Pete. Isn’t it funny that Reed’s father and mine both were what Mr. Barstow calls old cronies, and Reed says I am a cronette and he is a cronine in consequence. He is a very ridiculous person.”

Mr. Todd looked at her thoughtfully. “And you like him very much, this lad?”

“I liked him with a black face; I don’t know how much I should like him with a white one. Probably he will seem quite a different person. I must run along now, or Caro will think I am lost. I shall see you soon again, I hope.”

“We begin our organ lessons again on Saturday, don’t we?”

“That’s up to you, Mr. Music Master.”

“Then by all means. I shall want your report of the sale of your violin as soon as you have it.”

“That you shall.” She left him softly playing upon the violin, and went on to mail her note. “It’s just as well that it is addressed to Don Pedro,” she said to herself, “otherwise Mrs. Perry would be consumed with curiosity to know who my new correspondent might be. She keeps a mental list of all my other ones, I am sure.”

Caro was just stepping out of the completed party frock when Ellen came into the room where she was. “What a time you have been,” she exclaimed. “You haven’t been shut up in that cold house all this time, I hope.”

“Well, no; I was at the church with Mr. Todd part of the time, and I went to the post-office to mail a letter.”

“Frank Ives has been trying to get you on the ’phone. He has called up two or three times.”

“What did he want?”

“He wouldn’t leave his message, although I tried to get him to. He said he must speak to you himself, and that he would come around before one o’clock, so don’t run off again.”

Ellen’s only response was: “How pretty your dress is, Caro. It is mighty becoming, too. You’ll be the belle of the ball.”

“Not if you are there.”

“Which I shall not be, and it is nonsense to say I would be a belle if I were there. Florence would see to it that I played the part of wall flower.”

“I’d like to see her try, then; not with Frank and Clyde and the other boys there. You are not going to be so cruel as to refuse to go, Ellen, when you know how disappointed I shall be, not to mention several others. You can wear your lovely crêpe de Chine that you look so perfectly dear in.”

Just here a big red car dashed up to the door and Frank Ives sprang out. “I can’t go down,” declared Caro. “He wants to see you anyway, and I am not dressed. Go along.”

There was nothing left to do but go, which Ellen did half reluctantly. For some reason she didn’t care to see Frank just then. It was evident, however, that he very much wanted to see her. “I came to apologize,” were his first words. “Flo didn’t know you were here till I told her, so that explains why you haven’t received an invitation to her party. If you don’t mind the informality of it, I am the bearer of a verbal invitation which we hope you will accept. I want to come for you, and please give me as many dances as you can. Please don’t say No. You will spoil my evening if you do.”

With two persons asserting that the evening would be spoiled for them if she refused to attend the party, Ellen was obliged to give in, and sent Frank off in high feather. If she had but known, the invitation was entirely due to the stand he took in the matter, for he announced that he would not appear unless Ellen were there. “I’ll go and spend the evening with her,” he declared to his sister, “so count me out, Miss Snobby.”

“I think you are perfectly horrid,” pouted Florence. “It’s my party, and I reckon I can invite who I choose.”

“So you can,” retorted Frank, “but allee samee you can count me out, and I’d advise you to give an hour’s study to your grammar before you mingle in society.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Florence returned. “I reckon I can talk as good grammar as you or any of the boys.”

Frank shrugged his shoulders and lifted his eyebrows as he turned to walk away. He had not reached the door before Florence called him back. “I never can have my own way,” she fumed. “What is it you want me to do?”

“I want you to give me leave to invite Ellen in your name. I can make it all right with her, I think.”

“What will you do for me if I consent?”

“I’ll dance with that little foolish Suzanne Mills, or any one else you may select.”

“All right, but Ellen is such a Priss.”

“She is not at all. You don’t know her; she can be as jolly as the next, and stars! how she can sing.”

“Oh, very well, go along and get your little red-headed missy, only don’t expect me to fall on her neck.”

“You’ll have to be decently polite; that’s all I ask. I’ll see that she has a good time, so I should worry.”

So that is how Ellen happened to go to the dance, and, to the chagrin of her hostess, she had all the attention she could desire, and did not in the least miss the blandishments which Florence bestowed upon some of her guests, notably Suzanne Mills, who was a flapper of flappers, and as brainless a little somebody as one could meet, but she glittered in shining raiment, and was bestrung with gauds, so she could not help attracting attention. “Her people are awful rich,—that’s a real pearl necklace she’s got on,” Ellen heard Florence remark; and, thinking of Mabel Wickham, who also was “awful rich” but who dressed simply and made no display of jewelry, Ellen smiled. However, the blood rushed to her face when Suzanne asked, “Who is the red-headed girl that your brother Frank is so devoted to?”

“Oh, that’s a sort of a little ‘orphant Annie,’ taken up by one of her relatives who lives here. She is poor as poverty, and I’d never have invited her if Frank hadn’t insisted upon it.”

“She doesn’t look poor,” returned Suzanne. “That’s a handsome dress she has on, and those look like real rock-crystal beads she wears.”

“Probably some rich friend gave them to her; her cousin couldn’t afford either dress or beads, unless Ellen badgered her till she was obliged to give them to her to keep peace. It’s pretty hard on Miss Rindy to have to support a girl who is old enough to make her own living.”

Ellen’s face was flaming as the girls moved off. If only she could have escaped from her corner before those two came near enough for her to hear what they said. Eavesdropping? Perhaps it was, but she was hemmed in by a screen of palms, and could not easily have made her way out without crowding others. She was waiting for Frank, who had established her there.

Presently he came up, bearing a plate of chicken salad in one hand and one of oysters in the other. “I’ll get you some ice-cream and cake in a minute,” he said. “This is a nice, quiet corner, isn’t it? Just big enough for two. Rather a tight squeeze getting in and out, but room enough when you get here. I’ve had my eye on it from the first. I’ll be right back.” He set down the plates, and Ellen saw him threading his way through the crowd.

She felt that the food would choke her if she attempted to eat it, but how dispose of it? She could not let Frank see that it had not been touched. She looked around wildly. It would never do to empty it in any of the pots or tubs which held the palms. Then she realized that this was a bay window. Perhaps she could lift one of the sashes. She made the attempt, and found she could open the window far enough to allow her to toss out the contents of the plates, trusting that a dog or cat would discover it before morning. Then she sat back, fervently hoping that Frank would not return before what would seem a reasonable time for one to eat what he had brought. “He certainly will think I have a good appetite,” she said to herself as she regarded the empty dishes which she set down under one of the palms.

As luck would have it Frank did not return very soon. “There was such a mob I could scarcely get near the tables,” he said, “but I knew how to turn the trick by going around the back way, and I snatched a bite for myself while the going was good.”

Ellen picked at the ice-cream and nibbled a macaroon, but permitted herself to appear more absorbed in Frank’s long-winded account of how he was nearly held up for speeding a few days before. Frank was never eloquent, and his tales always held many digressions. Ellen made few comments, for her thoughts were not on the subject. She longed for the time to come when she might go, or, at least, that there might be an interruption.

This came before long, when Clyde Fawcett’s face appeared between branches of a tall palm. “So this is where you are twosing,” he exclaimed. “I might have known foxy old Frank would seek some out-of-the-way corner. They are going to start up the music again, Ellen, and this is our dance. Tight squeeze getting out, isn’t it? Here, I’ll help you. Step on the edge of that tub.”

With the help of her two cavaliers Ellen managed an escape from her bower and was soon among the dancers, desperately longing for the time to come when she could make her farewells. At last the hour arrived when Caro in her rosy dress came up to her. “Dad is here for me,” she said. “Are you going home with us, Ellen?”

“Not much she isn’t,” Frank spoke up. “I brought her and I shall take her home. Stay for another dance or two, Hazel.”

“Oh, no, I mustn’t,” Ellen spoke hastily. “Mrs. Rowe will be sitting up for us, and I must get back when Caro does.” And in spite of Frank’s persuasions she kept to her decision, glad when she could follow in Caro’s wake and murmur a few polite words to Florence as they took their leave. As she stepped into the big red car she cast one backward look at the pretentious, brilliantly lighted mansion. “Farewell, Castle Mammon,” she said to herself. “I hope never to enter your walls again.”

She said not a word to Caro of the conversation between Florence and Suzanne, but she did pour out her heart to her good old friend, Jeremy Todd. “They are so different, so very different from the people my mother and father knew. Nobody cared who was rich or who was poor. If they were good and talented and kind, it was all that mattered, and no one could have better times than artists and their friends.”

Mr. Todd nodded in assent. “I know that full well. ‘The life is more than meat, and the body than raiment.’”

“I never understood that so well before,” replied Ellen reflectively. “It is like something my mother used to tell me her old mammy often said of a certain sordidly rich family: ‘Dey has money, but dey hasn’t nothin’ else.’ How true that can be of some.”

Mr. Todd laughed. “That’s worth remembering, and one should be sorry for those who have nothing but money. With only that one cannot buy an appreciation of beauty, nor character, nor truth; in fact, few of the really worth-while things can be bought with money, and they are the rich who can enjoy the heaven-sent gifts instead of grubbing for what earth can supply.”

“But it is mighty nice to have riches,” sighed Ellen.

“To do good with, to help others, yes, and they are blest who have both the heavenly spirit and the earthly means.”

“It is the earthly means I am yearning for just now. One reason I am so angry with Florence is that she hit upon the truth when she said I should be earning my living. Plenty of girls of sixteen do earn it, and I must be casting around to find a way to do the same. It is intolerable to be spoken of as a charity girl who is sponging on a relative.”

Mr. Todd looked distressed. “I think, my dear, that your work is cut out for you while Rindy is laid up. When she is well it will be time enough for you to think of your independence. By the way, have you heard from your young friend about the violin?”

“Not yet, and it’s getting to be time that I did. Of course I can’t expect he will be as prompt as I want him to be, but I am getting a trifle impatient.”

Still it was several days before the letter did come, and in the meantime Caro asked Ellen what she had done with the violin. “I am letting Mr. Todd keep it,” she explained. “It is of more use to him than to me.”

“Oh, but I love to hear you play that pretty piece on it.”

“You’d soon get tired of that; I’d be like a music box that plays only one tune. No, it’s better Mr. Jeremy should keep it for the present.” In this way she put off Caro, and felt that she had done it rather cleverly.

To her great joy Reed’s letter came one day when she went herself to the post-office. She could hardly wait to open it, and hurried back, not to the doctor’s, but to her old home, where, “If I have to cry nobody will see me,” she said to herself.

Up to her own little room she went, sat down, and held the letter a moment or two before opening it, but, when she finally did, out fell a check which she hurriedly scanned. Down went the letter on the floor. “Oh! Oh! Oh!” she exclaimed. “It is too good to be true. It may be only filthy lucre, but, oh, how glad I am to get it! Say what you will, Mr. Todd, there are moments in life when there is nothing like a check to satisfy one’s cravings.” She held out the check before her and gazed at it fondly. “I could kiss you, but I will only press you to my heart,” which she proceeded to do. “Now, let’s see what that nice boy has to say.”

She picked up the letter, which read:

“DEAR CRONETTE:

“You must think me a beast for not answering your note sooner, but the fact of the matter is that I am laid up with a mean attack of grippe, and, lest my temperature should be too seriously affected by a note from you, Uncle Pete didn’t hand it over till this morning.

“Of course I want the dear fiddle, want it like the mischief, but I feel like a thief to take it from you. However, if it helps you out of a hole to cash the within meagre check, I send it along; and if the time comes when you want to buy it back, the fiddle, I mean, you must feel free to do it. By that time it may be a little shop-worn, so you should beat me down in the price. Remember that I am not paying what it is worth, but perhaps you will consider that my deep appreciation is worth something.

“I wish I could come for it myself, but, ‘Nay, nay, Pauline,’ says the doctor. If you have a chance to send it by some reliable messenger please do so, for it is too precious to be sent by any ordinary means. If no such trustworthy person appears on the horizon, just wait till I can come for it or can send some one.

“It was bad luck not to have a chance of seeing you again, but I shall do it yet. Somehow I feel it in my bones, honey chile, dat we is gwine be de bes’ ob fren’s.

“Yo’ expectation fren’ an’ pal,

“CRONINE.”

“What a nice, nice boy,” murmured Ellen as she folded the letter and put it back in the envelope; but almost immediately she took it out and read it all over again. Then she sat in deep thought for a while, but suddenly she jumped up, gathered together her letter and check, and ran in next door to show them to Mr. Todd.

CHAPTER XII

A DULL WINTER

In answer to Ellen’s ring Jeremy himself appeared from the kitchen where he was wiping dishes. Ellen fluttered her check before his eyes. “It’s come! It’s come!” she cried. “A hundred and fifty dollars, dear man. Isn’t it perfectly wonderful?”

“No more than it should be, not as much, in fact, but I’m heartily glad. I had a notion you’d get a letter to-day, for I’ve just received one from Peter Barstow.”

“And did he say anything about the violin? He wouldn’t, of course.”

“Why not? That is just the very subject he did write about.”

“How exciting! Do tell me.”

But just here came a call from the kitchen: “Jeremy, Jeremy, stop that gossiping and come back and finish your work. Shut that door.”

“Yes, dear,” came the response. “Meet me at the church in half an hour,” said the good old man hurriedly to Ellen, who only too well understood the situation. Mrs. Todd’s orders were not to be ignored, and dear old Jeremy never attempted apologies.

So he returned to his dishes, and Ellen went back to her room to gloat over her check and to plan how it was to be spent. The time thus employed passed so quickly that Jeremy was already at the organ when she reached the church. He nodded to her, but continued to draw forth harmonious chords absorbedly. She picked up her violin, which she discovered lying on the bench, and held it lovingly till the last note from the organ died away.

Jeremy turned toward her with a smile. She held out the violin to him. “Please,” she said, and sat with chin in hands while he tuned up and then played a quaint old air. “One more,” said Ellen, “and then we’ll talk.”

Nothing loath Jeremy continued to play, ending with a note so fine and high that it seemed as if it must issue from a thread of gossamer.

Ellen drew a long sigh. “I wish I could play like that,” she said, “but now I never shall. I suppose I’m consumed with selfishness, but I do hate to give up the darling violin. One part of me is thankful and willing to do anything for Cousin Rindy, and the other part rebels like fury.”

“Perfectly human and natural,” declared Mr. Todd. “Your first impulse was strong enough not to make you hesitate a minute to make the sacrifice, so I don’t see that you need flagellate your soul so severely. You will always have music, always have the great gift of appreciation, and that means everything. No matter what discords there are without, one can always find harmony within.”

Ellen nodded. She knew where the outside discords lay, so far as he was concerned, and she knew of the sacrifices he made to keep peace. Others might laugh at that oft-reiterated, “Yes, dear,” but it prevented war, sweet bells jangled, and all that. “Now tell me what Don Pedro said,” she began, settling herself comfortably.

“He says just what one who knew him might expect. He wants me to come to see him, to bring the violin, and makes the excuse of sending me a ticket because I am employed as messenger, a pack-horse, you’d suppose, from his elaborate apologies for burdening me with so weighty an object as a violin, one so valuable that I am liable to be set upon by thieves and am running terrible risks.”

“Isn’t that just like Don Pedro? He never does a nice thing for you but he makes you think you are doing him a tremendous favor. Shall you go?”

“That’s as you say. Will you trust me with the violin?”

“You dear, silly man, of course I will. I am delighted that you have the chance of seeing your old friend, and there is no one I would rather entrust the violin to; you know that.”

“Will you take the organ next Sunday, and will you forego your usual Saturday lesson?”

“Of course. I have had my holiday, now you must take yours.”

“Then say farewell to the violin, for I leave to-night. Don Pedro wants me to come at once, for the boy is going home to get nursed up after his illness and will be comforted by the new possession. I expect to be gone a week. Bessie will have a friend staying with her, but you will drop in once in a while, won’t you, to see how she is getting along?”

Ellen promised. Then she took up the violin, held it close for a moment, reverently kissed it, handed it back to Mr. Todd, and with eyes full of tears, hurried from the church. It was a bigger sacrifice than she at first realized in her moment of exaltation, but it was done, and now to put aside sentimentality and turn to stern duty. She mopped her eyes, threw back her head, and marched steadily up street to the doctor’s, entering his office as he was preparing to leave.

“Well, miss,” was his greeting, “where have you been gadding? I was just wondering if you would get back in time to go to the hospital with me.”

“I went up home for a little while, and then I stopped in to see Mr. Todd at the church. He is going away to-night, and wants me to take the organ while he is gone.”

“Old Jeremy going to have a holiday, is he? That’s good. Where’s he going?”

“To the city to visit an old friend, and also to take my violin to the person who has bought it.” Ellen thought she might as well put a bold face upon the matter.

“Your violin? Oh, yes, I did hear that you had one given you. Don’t you want to play on it yourself?”

“I shall not have time for that and for the organ, too; besides, I don’t believe Cousin Rindy ever could stand hearing me squeaking out scales and exercises every day.”

“Humph!” The doctor nodded thoughtfully. “Didn’t I hear something about it having belonged to your father?”

Ellen’s lip trembled, and she did not trust herself to do more than nod affirmatively as the doctor shot her a keen glance. But she soon controlled herself and spoke steadily as she asked, “How long will it be before Cousin Rindy can leave the hospital?”

“In about a couple of weeks, I should say, but don’t you worry any about that; she is better off there than she would be anywhere else, and the longer you make your visit to Caro the better she and the rest of us will like it.”

“That’s mighty nice for you to say, but I know Cousin Rindy will be fretting till she gets back home; she does so hate to be idle.”

“A good rest won’t hurt her, and as for you, it isn’t to be supposed that you can take on housekeeping and nursing, too.”

“But I shall have to, for a while.”

“We’ll see about that. Are you ready to go?”

Miss Rindy’s face brightened as Ellen entered the room. These daily visits meant everything to her. Ellen saved up bits of gossip to tell her, cut out jokes from the newspapers, brought some interesting story to read to her, and cudgelled her brains for some new means of entertainment.

“Well, here’s the useless old hulk still cumbering the earth,” was Miss Rindy’s greeting on this special day. “If Sam Rowe doesn’t get me out of this room pretty quick, I’ll have to mortgage my house and sell my old carcass to the doctors for what it would bring after I’m gone, though, being damaged goods, it wouldn’t bring much.”

“How can you conjure up such ghastly things?” said Ellen, stooping to kiss her. “In this room you are going to stay till you are able to go home. Moreover, you are not to fret over it another minute. Look at this, if you please.” She produced her check and gave it into her cousin’s hands.

“Where did you get this? What have you been doing? Who is this Reed Marshall?”

“I’ve been doing nothing disgraceful. Just keep quiet and I’ll tell you all about it,” which she proceeded to do.

“But your father’s violin! I’m not going to consent to you selling it.”

“You can’t help yourself; the deed is done. Now listen to me, Cousin Rindy, and don’t work yourself up into a pepper-jig. You know perfectly well that the violin is a useless possession so far as I am concerned, and one who is always discoursing upon usefulness and scorning sentimentality should encourage me in getting rid of it.”

“But not for my benefit; the price should be set aside for your own educational advantages.”

“Educational advantages go to grass! But for you I might this minute be scrubbing down the back stairs of an orphan asylum. Do allow me the happiness of paying a little toward my debts.”

“But I know how delighted you were to have the violin, and it grieves me to have you give it up.”

“I am surprised at you, Orinda Crump; the idea of you encouraging me in maudlin sentiment, a practical body like you. Now don’t let’s hear any more about it. I have you where you can’t badger me, so let’s accept what Heaven has sent and say Thank you to Reed Marshall.”

“Who is he? You haven’t told me.”

“The young man who blacked up and came to Mr. Barstow’s party.”

“How old is he, and what does he look like?”

“‘Haven’t an idea’ answers both those questions; you remember I told you I never saw him really. Dr. Rowe says that Miss Sophia Garrett has been here to see you.”

“Yes, she came out this morning with a string of gossip that would reach from here to town. What’s this about Jeremy Todd? Sophy says he is going to the city, neglecting his work at the church and running up useless expense,” Miss Rindy laughed as she quoted Miss Sophia.

“How in the world did she find out that he is going? I only knew it to-day, myself.”

“Trust Sophy for finding out things, and her tales never lose by the telling. So he really is going?”

“Yes, he is going to visit Mr. Barstow, who is an old friend, and as he is to be the bearer of the violin, Mr. Barstow insists upon paying all his expenses, and I am to take the church music while he is away, which will be only over one Sunday.”

“Isn’t that just like Sophy to make a mountain out of a mole-hill? She reminds me of those scientists to whom you give a bone and they will construct a mastodon. I can’t help going back to that check, Ellen. You are sure it isn’t too much? I’d hate to have you accept more than the thing is worth. It seems a monstrous price to pay for a violin.”

“It is a very fine one, and Mr. Todd says it is really worth more, so does Mr. Marshall say so in his note.”

“You didn’t bring the note for me to see. Why not?”

“Oh, I was in a hurry and it didn’t seem worth while,” Ellen answered casually, wondering just why she didn’t want her cousin to see it. “The check was the main thing. I am sure it will pay your hospital expenses.”

“But not the doctor.”

“Perhaps not, but I have another scheme for that.”

“What is it?”

“Sha’n’t tell you till I see how it is going to work out.”

Miss Rindy drew the girl’s head down as she rose to go. “You are a good child, Ellen,” she whispered, “and I am thankful you are here instead of scrubbing down the back stairs of some Home.”

“So am I,” Ellen whispered back. Then the doctor and the nurse appeared, and in a few minutes Ellen was on her way back to town.

During these daily trips back and forth to the hospital she had many confidential talks with the doctor, who was always friendliness itself, and one day came an opportunity to lay before him the scheme of which she had spoken to Miss Rindy. It was when he spoke of the pressure of his work, and of how difficult he found it to get time for correspondence and the making out of bills.

“I don’t see why I couldn’t do some of that,” Ellen spoke up. “If you would let me pay our bill that way, I’d be very grateful, Doctor.”

“What bill?”

“Your bill for attending Cousin Rindy. You go to see her every day.”

“I visit the hospital every day, and it is a pity if I am not allowed to drop in for a few minutes to see an old friend. There isn’t going to be any bill sent to Rindy Crump from my office. She can pay the hospital charges, or, rather, you can, but that’s all.”

“You know perfectly well she will never consent to that. She is a great stickler for paying what she owes, and she will be perfectly miserable if you don’t send her a bill.”

The doctor laughed. “I wish all my patients would have a touch of that kind of misery. My soul! Why wasn’t Rindy’s father a doctor so she could claim professional services as her right?”

“But he wasn’t, and she can’t.”

“I suppose you’d call that a laconic fact. I reckon I can be as stiff as she can, and I tell you there isn’t going to be any bill from me.”

“Very well, we won’t call it a bill, but just an exchange of courtesies. You work for us; I work for you. When shall I begin?”

The doctor almost allowed his car to run into a ditch as he turned to look at his companion. “You do beat the Dutch!” he exclaimed. “I’m not going to let you work for me.”

“Sorry you scorn my services. Perhaps you think I’m not equal to the task. I write a fair hand, and can tackle a typewriter on a pinch. If you think I will fall down on that job, some morning you’ll find me scrubbing off your back porch or sweeping down the walk; I’m bound to get even with you some way.” Ellen’s thoughts harked back to the conversation with her cousin.

The doctor was in a brown study the rest of the way home. After he had helped Ellen from the car she stood for a moment and laid her hand on his coat sleeve, looking up pleadingly into his face. “Please, Doctor,” she said.

The doctor laid his gloved hand upon hers. “Ellen North,” he said, “I’d hug you right here in front of my own windows if Sophy Garrett didn’t live across the street. You’re a witch. I give in. We’ll tackle those books and that pile of letters to-morrow morning.”

“I’d love to hug you if it wasn’t for Miss Sophia,” returned Ellen gayly.

In two weeks Miss Rindy was back in her own home, which was swept and garnished from garret to basement. The sweeping was not done by Ellen alone, for neighbors to the right and left lent a hand, and the garnishing promised to be overdone when anybody who had a blossoming plant brought it to adorn Miss Rindy’s room. Moreover, all sorts of contribution in the way of food were handed in, so, for a few days at least, there was no danger that the two cousins would suffer from hunger.

But as soon as this first excitement passed, everything settled down to a dull routine, and it was a tired Ellen who went to bed each night. From early morn till late at night every moment was filled, and many, many were the steps she took. Miss Rindy, more or less compliant when she was under the care of a regular nurse, became, as is usually the case in convalescence, a difficult patient, with all sorts of whimseys and unnecessary demands.

Under the long strain Ellen, too, grew irritable, and more than once rushed from her cousin’s room in tears. It was just after one of these tempests that Dr. Rowe happened to come in. Ellen opened the door for him. He looked at her keenly as he laid aside his hat and overcoat, then he took her by the chin and tipped back her head. “What’s the matter?” he asked sharply.

“Nothing much,” answered Ellen, the tears still too near the surface not to suffuse her eyes.

“There’s got to be a stop to this all work and no play business,” said the doctor. “Get on your things and I’ll take you for a ride.”

“But there is so much to do, and who will stay with Cousin Rindy?”

“Never mind about having so much to do, and as for Rindy, it will do her good to have a quiet hour in which to meditate upon her sins. Leave things where she can get at them, and she’ll get along. She is not liable to fall down in a fit.”

Ellen still hesitated, and, seeing this, the doctor promised to send Caro to stay with Miss Rindy, so Ellen finally went, still feeling rather conscience-stricken. “I feel as if I were neglecting my duty,” she sighed as she climbed into the car by the doctor.

“The trouble with you is that you are trying to cultivate a Puritan conscience,” returned he.

“You wouldn’t think so if you could have heard me ‘sass’ Cousin Rindy this morning. She is so notional and exacting sometimes, that I flare up and the fur flies. I suppose we get on each other’s nerves.”

“Exactly. Do you know, Miss North, that you have worked out that bill of mine? I wanted to talk to you about it; that’s why I got you off to myself to-day. When Caro is around she hangs on your neck and talks nonsense, while Rindy monopolizes the conversation when she is present. Do you want to keep on doing my sums for me?”

“Indeed I do if you want me to.” Ellen had been taking home the work and doing it in the evenings.

“Well, now that we are quits of professional services I can pay you something, not a munificent sum, but enough to pay some one to help you out with the work once in a while and give you more freedom.”

“Oh, doctor, how good you are! You know Beulah Fitchett does our washing, and I am sure she would be glad to come oftener.”

“Then that’s settled. I am getting up some statistics for an article I want to write for a medical magazine, so you can help with that; and I want to make a special report to the health department, so that will keep us busy for a while.”

Cheered by her drive and heartened by the prospect of relief from hard, rough work, Ellen returned to face the future bravely. Miss Rindy improved steadily, and soon was able to get about on crutches and to do many little things. Beulah responded with alacrity to the invitation to come and help with the housework, and while she never quite satisfied Miss Rindy, being sketchy in her performances and slow in her movements, nevertheless she was good-natured, honest, and clean. Moreover, though she had a high opinion of her own importance and had to be managed, Miss Rindy knew how to get along with her.

“I always invite her to do things and never order her,” she told Bessie Todd; “and she is such a source of entertainment that I would put up with a good deal for the sake of having her around. She told me to-day that her whole name was Beulahland, but they called her Beulah for short.”

“Great big fat thing; I wouldn’t be bothered with her,” responded Bessie.

“That’s because you haven’t a proper sense of humor,” returned Miss Rindy. “A laugh is worth more to me than servile respect.”

So Beulah, being “invited” to cook, wash, iron, and clean, stayed on, and the days went less heavily for Ellen. To be sure, she often sighed over the uninteresting matter contained in the doctor’s notes, and wearied of statistics, still at sight of Beulah’s ponderous figure and smiling black face, her thanks went flying heavenward for the means which enabled her to pay for this helper, and the tangles in her temper smoothed out accordingly.

However, once in a while the effort to appreciate plain living and high thinking was too much for her, and she so yearned for the flesh-pots, represented by those things which Frank’s attentions promised, that she smiled upon him graciously and built foolish castles and saw herself joint owner of the red automobile and mistress of an ornate abode.

“I believe I am developing into a flirt, and at seventeen that is pretty bad,” she confessed to Caro.

Caro giggled and said: “Go ahead, honey. I’d love you to be Florence’s sister-in-law; she would be so pleased.”

“Now you start my compunctions to raging,” cried Ellen, “for you know I’d be far from pleased. I suppose sisters-in-law can’t be eliminated even from daydreams. Perhaps one could stand Frank, but his family!” She made an expressive gesture and Caro giggled again. Therefore to Frank’s surprise and dismay she turned him the cold shoulder the next time they met, while she did penance by working doubly hard the following day.

CHAPTER XIII

A SPRING VISITOR

Long before all this Jeremy Todd had returned from the city to report that he had delivered the violin safely into the hands of Mr. Barstow, who would keep it till Reed Marshall came back to claim it. A royal time Jeremy had had with his old friend. “That visit has just made me over,” declared the good old man. “You remember that line in one of Richard Watson Gilder’s poems: ‘Now who can take from us what has been ours?’ That often comforts when the dark days are upon us. No one can ever take from me the joy of those days I have had with Peter Barstow.”

“Did he seem chagrined that I kept his gift such a little while,—that I was ready to part with it so soon?” Ellen asked wistfully.

“Not he. Don Pedro is a very understanding person, you know. I told him what you said about selfish sentimentality and he was much struck with the phrase.”

“It was borrowed from Cousin Rindy; don’t give me the credit for it.”

“Sounds like her. Well, my dear, sometimes our sacrifices come back to us in the form of joys. One never knows what flower may spring from a chance seed. These are pretty dark days for you, but the spring is on its way.”

And truly the spring was bringing the flower of a happy surprise to Ellen, for one day, when she was gathering some sprays of forsythia with which to adorn the table, she saw Jeremy Todd limping up the street toward her, and by his side walked a girl whose face and form looked very familiar.

Ellen dropped her flowers on the grass and ran down to the gate to meet the two. “It is, it is Mabel Wickham!” she cried. “How do you happen to be in Marshville?”

“Ask Mr. Todd,” replied Mabel laughing. “I hope I have not come because of vain imaginings. May we come in and tell you all about it?”

“Indeed you may.” Ellen opened the gate. “You don’t know how glad I am to see you.”

“And I am overjoyed to see you, but I want to see your cousin, too. May I? Is she able to receive strangers? Can she leave her room?”

“She not only leaves her room but gets all over the house on crutches. She is the pluckiest thing ever, and scorns being an invalid. Come in and I will call her.”

“Such a dear, quaint little old house as it is; I just love little houses,” said Mabel enthusiastically as she entered the hall; but she laughed when Ellen tragically indicated the ornaments on the mantel and the pictures on the walls.

“You can steep your soul in the beauties of our art treasures while I go to hunt up Cousin Rindy,” she remarked with a twist of a smile as she left the room, wondering meanwhile just what had brought Mabel to Marshville, and why she was in such a hurry to see Miss Rindy.

She was not long left in ignorance, for, as soon as Miss Rindy had clumped into the room and the usual forms of introduction were over, Mabel plunged into her subject.

“Please, Miss Crump,” she began, “put your mind in a receptive attitude, for if you don’t fall in with my plan I shall faint on the spot. To begin away back at the beginning: my grandmother loves to plan things months ahead, and so she commenced as soon as Christmas was over to talk about her summer plans. Year after year she has gone to a very fashionable, but deadly stupid, watering place where she could sit on the porch of a big hotel all day, do fancy work, and gossip with the other guests while they all rocked placidly. Well, I have stood it just about as long as I can, and this year, being of age, I made up my mind to rebel. My grandmother is neither old nor decrepit, and doesn’t need me in the least, for she will have hosts of friends in the same house, so I want to go off where I can enjoy myself in my own way. Last year one of my great-aunts died and left me a little cottage on an island off the Maine coast, and that is where I am crazy to go. Now this is where you come in.”

“Where we come in?” exclaimed Ellen excitedly.

“Exactly. Just hold your horses till my tale is told. Of course Gran held up her hands in holy horror when I suggested such a thing. The simple life has no appeal for her, and you would suppose the fisherfolk on the island went around in goatskins and armed with spears. Well, when I found she was deaf to all my blandishments I posted off to New York to my aunt, Mrs. Everleigh, who has more influence over Granny than any one else. Like the dear thing that she is, she listened to my tale of woe and promised to stand by me, so we planned out a course of action which promises to be successful if you will cooperate.”

“I may be very stupid, but I still fail to see our part in it,” Miss Rindy spoke.

“You will see in a minute, dear lady. There were two or three points to be settled before we could approach Granny again. We must have counter-arguments to meet hers. First, there must be some one provided to take my place, and we decided that a pretty, beguiling, and foolish little cousin, a débutante of next winter’s vintage, would be just the one, and we knew she would jump at the chance. Next, it would never do for me to go off into forest jungles and deserts wild without a proper chaperon; a cave man might grab me up at any moment and make off with me in a birch-bark canoe. Granny is still so unmodern as to believe in chaperons, you see, and she is mighty particular as to their quality. Well, we were mulling over this question when we happened to go to Mr. Barstow’s studio one afternoon. I was so full of my subject that I was ready to talk about it to every one, and I told my troubles to dear Mr. Barstow.”

“Dear Don Pedro, he would be just the one you would tell them to,” commented Ellen. “I haven’t a doubt but he could point to some way out.”

“He certainly did, so now it is up to you two. Oh, won’t you go with me? We could have such heavenly times, Ellen, and I am sure that invigorating air would do you a world of good, Miss Crump, make you over in fact. Please, please, don’t turn me down. I don’t mean that you are to decide at once. I shall be here till to-morrow, and you can sleep on it.”

“Do tell me what Mr. Barstow said,” Ellen urged.

“He sat thinking over the question when I put it to him, and all at once he looked up with that quizzical smile of his and asked: ‘What’s the matter with Ellen North and that fine cousin of hers? Why wouldn’t they be just the ones?’ I nearly fell on his neck. Then I rushed over and dragged Aunt Nell away from the people she was sitting with, and we all talked so fast that we had to begin all over again; but finally Mr. Barstow had the floor, and he proposed that I come down here and talk it over with you. He thought Mr. and Mrs. Todd might take me in for a day or two, which they have very kindly done, and that Mr. Todd would meet me, so here I am, thanks to the two blessed men.”

“But are you sure your grandmother will agree?” inquired Miss Rindy with caution.

“Oh, yes, I know she will, for Aunt Nell came back with me to Baltimore and we talked it all over. I think Gran is rather looking forward to watching Fan’s flirtations. The only thing that is uncertain is the matter of a cook, that is, provided you go. We could take our meals at a boarding-house, but it would be more fun to have them at home, don’t you think? I wouldn’t mind a course in domestic science myself, and it would be rather jolly to go to the store and pick out things, you and I, Ellen.”

“It all sounds so perfectly heavenly,” murmured Ellen. “I’ve never spent a summer at the seashore, and I have always longed to go to Maine.”

“You must understand,” Mabel went on hesitatingly, “that there will not be the slightest expense attached to the undertaking, and that whatever salary should be attached to the office of chaperon will be yours, Miss Crump. You will be my guests, of course.”

Miss Rindy’s head went up. “I could not think of demanding a salary. To be your guests would be a privilege sufficient to balance matters.”

Mabel looked helplessly at Ellen, who shook her head warningly. One must not antagonize Miss Rindy in matters of this sort. It was evident that she was disposed to think favorably of the proposition, and of Mabel, so the latter switched off to another subject.

“One lovely thing about going up to this island is that we don’t have to bother about clothes. We can dress any old way we choose. We shall need some warm things, I warn you, for it never gets very hot, except sometimes in the middle of the day, and even then you can count upon a breeze from the sea. I was there for a week once, and I know.”

“One would suppose it was all settled,” said Miss Rindy smiling.

“Oh, but it is, at least nearly, isn’t it?” said Ellen, throwing her arms around her cousin.

“I’ll tell you to-morrow. How is an old hoppety-go-quick like me to take that long journey on crutches? When do you expect to go, Miss Wickham?”

“It’s perfectly lovely up there in June. Could you go as early as the middle of that month?”

“We’ll see.”

“You’ll be giving up your crutches and be walking with a cane by that time,” Ellen broke in; “the doctor said so.”

“You could go all the way by water if you liked, or we could motor up. At all events it would be made as easy a journey for you as possible,” Mabel promised.

Miss Rindy only nodded reflectively. “We’ll let the matter rest for the present,” she decided, and nothing further would she say.

Mr. Todd had taken his departure before Mabel had started her explanations, and now Ellen bore her friend up to her own room, where they chattered like magpies while Ellen made ready to go out with Mabel to show her the town.

It is superfluous to say that for the rest of the day the two were in a wild state of excitement. While Ellen despised snobbishness, she nevertheless could not but feel an inward pride in her new friend, not so much because of her wealth, but because of her little high-bred air, her gracious, unaffected manner, free from any gaucherie. Mabel could not lay claims to great beauty, but her small, well-set head, her fine carriage, her wide-open, frank, blue eyes set rather widely apart, the unmistakable elegance of her dress, all distinguished her.

Caro at first was disposed to be jealous, but was soon won over by Mabel’s sweetness, and was the first to sound her praises to an eager circle, Florence Ives among them, and it must be confessed that Caro was overweeningly boastful in the presence of this young person. “I always told you that Ellen had lovely friends in the city,” she said triumphantly.

“I believe I’ll give a little tea to-morrow and ask Ellen to bring Miss Wickham,” said Florence, much impressed, and always on the lookout for desirable acquaintances.

“You can spare yourself the trouble,” replied Caro coolly, “for she leaves to-morrow.”

“O dear!” sighed Florence, and was further chagrined when Frank reported that he, with Claude Fawcett and Julius Safford, had been asked to take supper at Dr. Rowe’s to meet Miss Wickham. In this small town the old-fashioned custom of a midday dinner and a substantial supper was still in vogue.

“Of course Ellen will be there,” said Frank complacently, and again Florence sighed.

There were always jolly times for the young people when they met at Dr. Rowe’s. The doctor himself was a jovial soul, while Mrs. Rowe was sympathetic and motherly, never frowning upon youthful nonsense, and always ready to indulge her only child in dispensing such hospitality as pleased her. Consequently Caro’s invitations were never refused, for, as the boys said, “You are sure of good eats when you go to the Rowes’”; and with boys this counted for much, “greedy creatures as they are,” Caro was wont to remark.

They never hesitated to express their appreciation, however, and declared it was not all loaves and fishes which brought them to the house. “You are such a good sport, Caro,” Clyde told her, “and you don’t treat us like company. We don’t have to just sit on chairs and pay compliments; you don’t even mind a little rough-house as long as we don’t break up the furniture, and you don’t get mad if we jolly you, so that’s why we always like to come.”

Mabel was told all this when at first she hesitated at going to the house of utter strangers. “I’m here for such a short time,” she said, “and I don’t know them at all. Should I be so informal?”

Ellen laughed. “I think there spoke your grandmother. Don’t you like being informal? I thought you did. Caro is a dear, a sort of primrose-on-the-river’s-brim person, but overflowing with good-will. The whole family are my best friends, excepting dear Jeremy Todd, of course, and because of that you are their friend, too. The boys are just nice, everyday boys. Frank tries to be grown up sometimes, but the others are nothing but playfellows, and we all have mighty good times together.”

“It all sounds very refreshing, so if you think it will be all right I’ll be glad to go,” Mabel decided.

Therefore Caro had her triumph, and no one could say that it was a disappointing evening. Caro charged each boy separately that he was not to “sit up and pay compliments,” but must make it as jolly as possible. “Please don’t be stiff,” she begged. “Tell funny stories, and if it helps to break the ice you may jolly me all you choose.” And the boys obeyed her to the letter, so that Mabel said she had never laughed so much in all her life, and that she wouldn’t have missed that supper for the world.

“I am so tired of bridge parties and the grown-up doings that Gran loves to force me into. She is a perfect dear, and adores me, but she is, oh, so conventional and I get so tired of p’s and q’s; that is why I long to get away to more simplicity this summer.”

“Have you ever been to Beatty’s Island?” Ellen inquired.

“Once, but only for a week, and that when I was a little girl, but I remember how fascinating a place it seemed to me then.”

This talk took place while the two were putting on their wraps; then Caro appeared, and the subject was dropped, for not a word was to be spoken to others of the summer plans till they were really settled.

Frank and Clyde saw the girls home, when they parted, not to meet again till the next morning.

“I’ll come over right after breakfast,” Mabel promised. “Please don’t settle anything till I get there,” after which rather cryptic remark only goodnights were said.

CHAPTER XIV

WHERE THE SUMMER WAS SPENT

It was with difficulty that Ellen refrained from pouring forth the next morning the eager question, Are we going? And that she might not yield to the temptation she jabbered away while she was helping with breakfast, and gave a detailed account of the doings of the night before. Once in a while Miss Rindy gave her a quizzical look, but made no reference to the matter of such great interest to both of them.

They had just risen from the table when in rushed Mabel. “I couldn’t wait another minute,” she cried breathlessly. Then dropping on her knees at Miss Rindy’s feet and clasping her hands pleadingly, she exclaimed, “Please, dear, good lady, don’t keep me in suspense any longer. Tell me that you’re not going to turn me down, but that you are going.”

“Going? Where?” answered Miss Rindy teasingly with the same quizzical smile she had given Ellen.

“To Beatty’s Island.”

“Oh, that’s the name of the place you were talking about yesterday, is it?”

“Didn’t I tell you?” Mabel was still on her knees. “I sha’n’t get up till you say you are going,” she continued.

“It would be too bad to allow you to endure such a penance, so——” Miss Rindy paused and continued to smile down on the supplicant.

“So—so——” Mabel waited a moment expectantly. “You are going, aren’t you?” she said at last.

And Miss Rindy answered, “I are, you are, we are.”

Up sprang Mabel to give her a violent hug. “You dear, dear thing!” she exclaimed.

“Here, here, look out,” cried Miss Rindy. “I don’t allow such demonstrations.”

“I must do something to express my joy,” said Mabel. “‘My heart with rapture thrills, and dances with the daffodils.’ Be a daffodil, Ellen.” She caught Ellen around the waist and the two went off in a wild dance, scaring Wipers out of his wits, and causing Miss Rindy to cry out, “If this is the way you two are going to behave, I’ll take back what I said and will stay at home.”

“I’ll be good, indeed I will,” promised Mabel, dropping into a chair and folding her hands meekly.

“Then let’s talk business,” returned Miss Rindy, herself taking a seat. “You spoke of taking a cook along. Would it be possible to engage one of your grandmother’s servants? If her house is to be closed, it might be a good idea.”

Mabel shook her head. “Wouldn’t do at all. They are all so high and mighty that any one of them would leave on the first boat. They would scorn a simple way of living, and would require all sorts of things that Beatty’s Island doesn’t furnish. No, no, we must have a different sort.”

“Why not Beulah?” Ellen spoke up. “She is a nice comfortable kind, used to our ways, and I believe she would be willing to go.”

“Where is she? Where is she?” asked Mabel eagerly.

“She’ll be along after a while; she is not one given to undue haste, but she gets there in course of time. Slow and steady wins the race, you know. She is no sylph, and large bodies move slowly.”

“I don’t care how big she is, so she does our work, is a good cook, and is clean and honest.”

“She is all that. Her chief fault is an overgrown idea of her own importance, but Cousin Rindy knows how to manage her, and it would be all right if we could induce her to go.”

“And stay,” put in Miss Rindy grimly.

The upshot of the matter was that Beulah consented to go, though not without some demur. “It terrible fur off, ain’t it?” she protested. “Are it crost dem waters where you went to tend de sojers, Miss Rindy?”

“O dear, no,” Miss Rindy reassured her. “I was days in crossing, and here we shall leave one afternoon and get there the next day at noon, Miss Wickham tells us.”

“Where we stays at night?”

“On the train if we go by rail; on the boat if we go by water.”

Beulah considered this, and Mabel struck in with the conciliatory question, “Which way would you rather go, Beulah?”

“She will go the way we do unless she prefers to go up alone, in which case she can choose her own route,” said Miss Rindy severely.

Beulah’s feathers drooped at once. “’Deed, Miss Rindy, I skeered to go all dat long ways by mahse’f; I goes when yuh does, an’ trabbles de same. Dat is,” she continued, her dignity again rising, “if so be I does go.”

“You know you’re going, Beulah,” said Miss Rindy decidedly. “You wouldn’t throw away such a good chance as this. Of course you’re going.”

“Yas’m, I ’specs I is,” replied Beulah meekly.

So that matter was settled, though Beulah changed her mind more than once before June. “She teeters up and down like a seesaw,” declared Miss Rindy. “I don’t believe she has a notion of not going; it is only that she wants to impress us with her importance. I’ll fix her.”

And fix her she did, for one morning when Beulah was declaring that she didn’t know after all that she would go,—it was so far,—Miss Rindy turned upon her. “Now, look here, Beulah,” she said, “I’ve had enough of this will and won’t. You’ve got to make up your mind this very minute or I’ll write to Miss Wickham and tell her to put an advertisement for a cook in the Baltimore papers. No fear that she won’t get plenty of answers. No more nonsense, you understand. Now, which is it, go or stay?” Miss Rindy fixed her with a glittering eye.

Beulah fumbled with the edge of her apron, turning her head this way and that. “Yuh so up an’ down, Miss Rindy,” she made complaint. “I nuver see anybody with such millingtary ways. I ’specs yuh learns ’em whilst yuh was follerin’ eroun’ dem sojers. It’s jes’ lak yuh stands me up aginst a wall an’ says, ‘Shoot!’”

“Shoot!” cried Miss Rindy so suddenly that Beulah gave an elephantine jump.

“Law, Miss Rindy,” she cried, “yuh skeers me outen a year’s growth.”

“Maybe that would be a good thing to do, if it affected your girth,” returned Miss Rindy laughing. “Now, look here, Beulah, you know that you’re nothing but a poor worm; that hymn you were singing this morning says so, and the way you crawl anybody would know it was true. We’re willing to take you with us, worm though you be, but if you don’t want to go, just say so at once without any more shilly-shallying, but I shall have my opinion of you, and it won’t be only a worm that I shall call you to your class leader. You gave me your word that you were going, and you know what happens to those that don’t speak the truth; if you don’t know, just look in Revelation, twenty-first chapter, twenty-seventh verse.”

“Law, Miss Rindy, yuh sho does skeer me; yuh wuss’n de preacher.”

“I’m glad of it; you need some one to be.”

Beulah stood, still fingering her apron. Presently she asked, “Which a-way yuh is goin’, Miss Rindy?”

“The quickest way, I think. We can take the Hell Gate route and reach Portland early in the morning.” Miss Rindy’s lips twitched as she said this.

“Den I stays. I don’t go no such way. No, ma’am, it’s too dangersome. I don’t keer what the preacher say. I doesn’t trus’ mah body near no hell gate.”

Miss Rindy laughed. “You are a silly creature, Beulah; that’s only the name of what used to be a dangerous spot in the East River. It is perfectly safe. You’ll be on the train, and won’t know when you get there.”

However it required a deal of explanation to convince Beulah, but finally she gave in, and later in the day was inspired to sing with great earnestness, “The gospel train are comin’; I hears it close to han’.”

In the meantime Ellen had made known to her various friends that she was to be Mabel Wickham’s guest for the summer.

“It will be perfectly lovely for you, but very sorrowful for me,” sighed Caro. However, she did not delay in spreading the news, specially delighting in giving the information to Florence Ives.

“Ain’t it a shame she didn’t stay long enough for me to give her a tea?” said Florence. “Then she might have invited me, too. I suppose it’s to Bar Harbor they go. I wisht we could take a cottage there, but Papa says it’s too highbrow for him.”

Caro did not enlighten her further, though later on Frank did, and when she learned the location of Mabel’s cottage her desire toward Maine was considerably lessened. “No wonder she was willing to invite Ellen to a stupid little place like that,” she scoffed. “I know I wouldn’t want to go, and I’m glad I’m not invited.”

“You needn’t be afraid that you’d have a chance to turn down any invitation of Miss Wickham’s,” returned Frank scornfully. “She doesn’t run with girls of your type.”

“Pff!” ejaculated Florence loftily. “I reckon I’m good enough to go wherever you go, and anyway it is a nice way you have of speaking of your sister.”

“We may be nouveau riche, but I hope I’m neither a grafter nor a toady,” replied Frank, a remark which made no impression whatever upon Florence, but which in the future gave Frank some hours of indecision in his effort to stand up for his principles.

Most of Ellen’s friends rejoiced with her, however, chief among them being Jeremy Todd and Dr. Rowe. “It will do you a world of good, both you and Rindy,” said the latter. “I couldn’t have recommended a better plan.”

And so when the time came Ellen started off with a light heart. By this time Miss Rindy was able to get around with the use of only a cane, and was able to take her usual dominant place in the household. The neighbors promised to look after Wipers, and everything seemed to be in readiness the morning of the start. But where was Beulah?

“Now isn’t that just like her?” exclaimed Miss Rindy, who had been fuming and fretting for the past hour. “I suppose she thinks the train will wait for her, she’s that important.”

“There’s plenty of time yet,” Ellen tried to soothe her.

“There may be, but one can never tell what delays may crop up. I’d rather be half an hour too early than one minute too late.”

They were standing on the porch, the door locked and the key in Ellen’s hand, ready to be delivered into Jeremy Todd’s keeping, when they saw Beulah lumbering up the street and laden down with various equipments for the journey. Her fellow-travellers hurried down to the gate to meet her. “I don’t know why I didn’t tell her to meet us at the railway station,” complained Miss Rindy; “it would have saved time. Hurry up, Beulah,” she called out.

“’Deed, Miss Rindy, I comin’ fas’ as I kin,” responded Beulah breathlessly. “I so borned down with all dese yere bun’les an’ bags.”

Miss Rindy looked aghast as she saw what Beulah carried: a dilapidated suit-case, bursting at corners and tied up with various assortments of string, a discarded cover of a sofa pillow, tied around the top to make a bag, various heterogeneous newspaper bundles of different shapes and sizes kept together by strips of muslin, the string having given out, and, last, a paper bag containing, supposedly, a hat which was secured to Beulah’s sleeve by a large safety-pin.

“My fathers, Beulah!” exclaimed Miss Rindy. “You can’t travel all the way to Maine with that collection. Why didn’t you put them all in one bag or trunk?”

“Didn’t have nothin’ but dis yere suit-case, an’ dey wasn’t no papers big enough to pack uverthing in.”

“Well, why didn’t you send some of the stuff by parcel post?”

“I don’ trus’ my bes’ clothes to no mail bag. I sees how dey flings ’em eroun’.”

“You might have worn the hat, at least.”

“W’ar mah bes’ hat in dem dirty cyars? Um-um! Why, Miss Rindy, it trim’ with pink roses an’ white gauzy ribbon, an’ yuh knows what it look lak when we gets dere. I pays two ninety-eight fo’ dat hat, an’ I ain’t spile it for nobody.”

Miss Rindy hastily consulted her wrist watch. “Well, all is I am not going to have us all disgraced when we meet Miss Wickham in New York. Open the door, Ellen. No, I’ll go. You come with me, Beulah. There is an old steamer trunk in the attic, and into that these things must go, train or no train. Run on ahead, Ellen, and see if you can get Mike Reilly to come after the trunk. Don’t lose a minute; we may be able to make the train yet.”

Ellen started off at a run, and did not stop when she heard some one behind her shouting her name, but she came to a halt when an automobile drew up to the sidewalk and Barry Dove-Hale jumped out.

“I see you are in a hurry,” he said. “Hop in and I’ll take you anywhere you want to go.”

Ellen scrambled into the car and explained the situation. Immediately Barry turned his car around. “No use hunting up Mike,” he declared. “He is an uncertain quantity unless you order him the day before you want him. We’ll go back, pick up the trunk, and I’ll take the whole outfit down to the station. If the trunk is ready, we can make it. Is it a big one?”

“No, only a small steamer trunk.”

“Then I can easily manage it.”

“You simply will save our lives,” Ellen said fervently. “It came to a question whether we should miss the train or miss taking Beulah. We simply couldn’t stand appearing in New York with Beulah’s impedimenta.”

Mr. Hale laughed. “I don’t blame you. Just leave the whole business to me and I’ll promise to see you through. I’m used to doing things on short order, as you would find out if you lived at our house.”

He dashed up the stairs, Ellen after him, as soon as they reached the house. Miss Rindy was just locking the trunk, which Mr. Hale promptly shouldered, and in a few minutes they were at the station, Beulah still clinging to the bag which contained her rose-wreathed hat, for this she refused to relinquish. The train was in sight when they reached the platform, so there was little time for good-bys. Caro was there to give Ellen a parting embrace, Frank came to the fore with magazines and a box of candy, to Jeremy promptly was handed over the key. With the use of her cane Miss Rindy nimbly mounted the steps of the car, Beulah was boosted after her, and Ellen, waving farewells, stood in the doorway as the train moved off. It was fortunate she was there, for at the very last moment Mr. Hale ran alongside to thrust the check for the trunk into her hand. “Just did make it,” he cried, then stood back to make a farewell gesture and they were off.

Ellen sank into the seat by her cousin’s side. “What a relief,” she sighed. “It was a close shave, wasn’t it?”

“Couldn’t have been much closer. It’s just as I always say, Ellen; it is safer to be half an hour too early than one minute too late. If we had not been prompt ourselves, there’s no telling what might have happened. It’s lucky we checked our own trunks yesterday.”

Beulah, in serene possession of her hat, sat complacently looking out of the window. From time to time she produced from some obscure pocket some article of food of which she partook with evident enjoyment. First it was a banana, then a ginger snap, next some bread and cheese, an apple, a strip of pink and white candy, then peanuts. To enliven the journey, once in a while she waddled to the water cooler. When the train boy came through she supplied herself with various other comestibles and began all over again. To eat was to live, in Beulah’s opinion.

“She’ll probably acquire a larger appetite up in that bracing climate,” Ellen whispered to her cousin.

“Then let us be thankful that it is Miss Wickham and not we who will pay the store bills,” replied Miss Rindy.

They were joined by Miss Wickham in New York, and by noon the next day were aboard a small steamer which wound its way through a many-islanded bay to a quiet cove, and presently Beatty’s Island was reached. A tall, stalwart old man with weather-beaten face, shrewd blue eyes, and white chin-whiskers was on the lookout for them. “Cap’n Belah, Cap’n Belah,” Mabel called, “were you looking for us?”

He strode up to her. “Wal, here you be,” he greeted her by saying. “Cal’lated you’d get here on this bo-at. Got any traps?”

“We have trunks and these hand-bags.”

“I d’know as I can lug the hull passel of you,” he said as he surveyed Beulah’s proportions. “I ain’t got any insurance on my kerridge, and I ain’t bought myself an aut’mobile yet.” His eyes twinkled as he said this. “I’ll get Sim to fetch up your trunks, and them as is good walkers can go on to the cawtage while I look after the lame and lazy.”

“We’ll walk, Miss North and I, for I remember it isn’t far. How are your family, Cap’n Belah?”

“They’re pretty spry. My woman hove her ankle out a while ago, but she’s getting on pretty good. She done it up in hot molasses and salt and she says it don’t hurt a mite. Wal, who’s going to git in first?”

“Miss Crump,” Mabel said promptly. “Miss Crump, this is Cap’n Belah Simpson, who is going to help us out of all our difficulties.”

Cap’n Belah grinned and jerked his head toward Beulah. “Is she one of ’em?” he asked in a stage whisper, but he helped her into the carriage and stowed away the hand luggage while Ellen and Mabel started up a long flight of stairs, past blossoming lilacs and apple trees, although it was mid-June. A little farther away the road turned and they caught sight of a wide expanse of blue sea, embraced on one side by a curving line of shore, but on the other side stretching out into what seemed limitless space.

“There’s the house!” cried Mabel, quickening her steps as two or three gray roofs appeared over the brow of the hill.

“Which? Which?” questioned Ellen eagerly.

“The one nearest the shore to your left.”

They broke into a run and reached the house before Cap’n Belah and his “kerridge” arrived.

“We have the key to the back door,” announced Mabel; “we’ll go in that way.” This they did, and at once entered a small passage which led on one side into the kitchen and on the other to the maid’s room. Mabel surveyed the two rooms speculatively. “I pray they may be big enough for Beulah,” she remarked. Then there came a pounding at the front door, and they went on through the living-room to admit Cap’n Belah’s load.

CHAPTER XV

THE HAUNTED HOUSE

An intensely blue sea embracing green islands, gray rocks against which sometimes curled, sometimes dashed, white-crested waves; a sky softly blue in the daytime, often rosy-flecked at sunset, at night a splendid background for myriad stars which never before seemed so near and so bright; peaked fir trees, song sparrows singing from the housetops, robins calling cheerfully from grassy hummocks, all these so impressed Ellen that it was with difficulty that she could bring herself to make a practical application of her mind to such affairs as her cousin demanded.

The house, though small, gave ample room for even Beulah. It was still cool enough in the evenings to light the logs in the big fireplace, and the days were long enough to afford time for walks in the morning, sailing in the afternoon, and supper on the rocks before dark.

Miss Rindy was in her element in the exercise of her executive powers, and Beulah burst forth into song at intervals, thus showing her content with the situation.

However, the latter met her Waterloo the first time that lobsters were to be served for supper. She appeared at the door of the living-room gingerly holding a lobster in each hand, gripping a claw firmly with a dish towel. “Law, Miss Rindy,” she exclaimed, “what kin’ o’ bugs is dese? I skeered o’ ’em. Boy fetch ’em in an’ say yuh-alls order ’em. What good is dey, Miss Rindy, ma’am?”

“Why, good to eat,” answered Miss Rindy. “Did you never see a lobster, Beulah?”

“I hears Miss Mabel talk ’bout live br’iled lobster. Is dey daid?” Beulah regarded them suspiciously.

“Of course. I wouldn’t undertake, myself, to boil them, so I had Mrs. Simpson do it for us; it is an everyday matter with her. You’ve heard the saying, ‘red as a boiled lobster,’ haven’t you?”

“I ’specs I has, but I doesn’t recomember. Anyway, Miss Rindy, yuh doesn’t ketch me eatin’ dem evil-eyed critturs. How yuh eats ’em? Dey is hard as rocks.”

“You open them as you do crabs, and take out the meat,” Miss Rindy explained. “You’ve prepared crabs many a time, Beulah.”

“Oh, yas’m, I has, but I skeered to tackle dese owdacious-lookin’ critturs. I knows crabs, but I nuver had de presentations of dese yere lobsters.” She bore them back to the kitchen.

“Now what’s to be done?” said Miss Rindy. “Do you know anything about opening lobsters, Miss Wickham?”

“I’m afraid I don’t. It has never been a part of my education.”

“Nor mine. I don’t want you all to be poisoned by getting hold of some deadly part,” returned Miss Rindy.

“Why not take them up to Mrs. Simpson and get her to show us how?” Ellen suggested.

“Just the ticket,” exclaimed Mabel, springing up. “Come along, Ellen. We’ll take a lesson from Mrs. Belah, and the next time we’ll show Beulah, so we’ll be independent for the rest of the summer.”

They bundled up the lobsters and bore them off to Mrs. Simpson, who laughed when she learned their errand. That any one should be so ignorant as not to know how to open lobsters was incomprehensible to her. “These city folks don’t know everything,” she confided to her next-door neighbor. However, she was “pleased to accommodate them,” she said, and each girl performed her task creditably under direction.

Mrs. Belah, or Aunt Noby, as every one called her, was a gentle old lady who had not outgrown an ancient belief in witches, signs, charms, and ghosts. She had had signs that very morning which indicated that she was to have strange visitors, so she was not in the least surprised when the two girls arrived. There was a horseshoe nailed above the door to keep off witches, for “there do be witches,” she said. As for ghosts, was there not a haunted house on the very next island? Every one knew that mysterious noises issued from it at certain times, and more than one had heard footsteps and had actually seen a pale face at the window.

“How fascinating!” cried Mabel. “We must go over there and investigate some day, Ellen. Have you ever been there, Aunt Noby?”

“Not I. Nothing would induce me. I’ve no wish to have any dealings with ungodly beings. The Bible warns us. Wasn’t Saul made to suffer because he dealt with familiar spirits? No, no, I cast all such doings from me.”

The girls took their leave, smiling as they went. “Isn’t she a dear, old-fashioned thing?” said Mabel. “Just the same, I mean to explore that house. Will you be a sport and go with me, Ellen? It will be such an adventure.”

“Nothing would suit me better. I’m primed for high adventure.”

“Then let’s go this afternoon; there’s no time like the present.”

The matter of lobsters was forgotten in this new excitement, but Miss Rindy brought back the subject, and the two girls were obliged to explain the anatomy of the creature before they were permitted to talk of anything else.

“One thing at a time,” said Miss Rindy. “I have a single-track mind, and can’t mix lobsters with haunted houses.”

“But you will go with us, won’t you? Please,” Ellen begged.

“How far is it?”

“Over on the next island.”

“Too far for an old limp-and-go-fetch-it like me. Don’t stay too late, and don’t let the goblins get you.”

The girls started off in high feather. Their way led to the end of Beatty’s Island, and thence by means of a bridge to Minor’s Island. Wild roses adorned the sides of the road, little ripe strawberries peeped out from the running tendrils of their vines, a sandpiper twittered and ran along ahead of them in frightened endeavor to lead them away from its nest, gulls screamed in noisy combat as they followed in the wake of a fishing boat, but the girls heeded none of these, for their spirits were winged for adventure.

In Mabel’s companionship Ellen felt happier than she had been since the dear studio days. On this peaceful island all the troubles of the past three years seemed to roll from her; the present was enough, no need to peer into the shadowy future. “Ah me, how glorious all this is!” she sighed contentedly. “I wonder if you know, Mabel Wickham, what it means to me to have you to walk with, to talk to. Never have I had such a dear chummy person to delight my soul.”

“Same here,” replied Mabel promptly. “All my life I’ve been looking for an Ellen North, and to think I should have found her simply by putting my finger on a little spot on the map. Don’t tell me things just happen; they are ordered, arranged by Heaven, or they wouldn’t be so wonderful.”

“So I believe. Do you suppose there are any more delightful things waiting for us around the corner?”

“Or at the haunted house,” returned Mabel laughing.

“That might be, of course. No place is so queer or so insignificant that it cannot hold the germ of a future joy, Mr. Todd says.”

“What a dear old man he is. I’d like just such a friend, but they don’t seem to come my way. You are a lucky girl, Ellen.”

“I believe I am in some directions. Certainly I have some wonderful friends, you, for instance.”

“Thanks for the compliment; I can return it.”

“I should think you would have the opportunity of making any kind of friend you wished,” said Ellen thoughtfully.

“You don’t know how difficult it is. I scarcely ever meet any one who thinks my thoughts or likes my likes. If I do meet any one promising, he or she is whisked away before I have a chance for a better acquaintance. Of course I do know some perfectly dear people that I love dearly, but they can’t enter into my interests and ambitions. My dear grandmother thinks I am queer to want a career. She can’t see why I shouldn’t be satisfied with a butterfly existence. I live within sight of the Monument, which is a fact that settles my status, to her mind. I can sit at my window and watch the passers-by as they promenade after church, a great privilege, that. I can listen to all the latest gossip about those in my own set. I can go to the best shops and have intimate talks with Miss Maggie or Miss Jennie, who will advise me what to buy, and will serve me well because I am my grandmother’s granddaughter. I never have to soil my hands with menial work. I can entertain and be entertained, so what in the world is there left in life to wish for?” Mabel laughed a little bitterly. “Would that fill your life satisfactorily?” she asked earnestly. “Would clothes and fine food and foolish gossip make up the summum bonum of your existence?”

“No, I am sure it wouldn’t, although I haven’t any large contempt for the fine clothes and food. I shall not disdain that lobster salad, for example.”

Mabel laughed. “But you have your career all cut out for you, a talent to cultivate which is a gift the fairies did not bestow upon me.”

“How do you know you haven’t a talent? What career appeals to you?”

“Something that would be for the good of mankind. I’d like to go into social service, but Gran would be horrified, be scared lest I should lower my position in life by washing the faces of dirty little children. I might bring home germs, or some one might see me speaking to one of the lower classes; that would never do. I have thought of teaching, training for some special subject, but it would mean that I might rob one more deserving of a salary. I don’t want to be a secretary, nor do I want to go into business. Those who need to make a living should not be thrust aside by those whose living is assured; that is what destroys the balance. So, there you are, Ellen. What shall I do?”

“How do you know but your vocation may be that of home-maker?” returned Ellen laughing.

“Bah! I didn’t expect that of you, Ellen. I see no prospect of such a career at present. I am twenty years old, and it is time I was turning my attention to something definite. It is all very well for you to talk, who know exactly what you are going to do.”

“What am I going to do?”

“Cultivate your musical talents, your lovely voice and all that. Go to the city and study, of course.”

“And desert Cousin Rindy? Oh, no, I couldn’t do that. I shall stand by in Marshville as long as she needs me. When she doesn’t, I’ll begin to think of something else.”

“But you wouldn’t have to desert her; she could go to the city with you and take a little apartment.”

“Do you think we are bloated bond-holders? No, no, Marshville must be my home as long as it is Cousin Rindy’s.”

Mabel looked troubled, but had no answer just then, for the haunted house was before them. It was a dingy, ramshackle building, gray and deserted; broken slats flapped in the shutters, doors sagged on their hinges, and one dead limb of a scraggy tree scraped the moss-grown roof at every gust of wind.

The two girls, however, did not hesitate to approach by way of a grass-grown walk. “It does look the character,” observed Mabel as they paused on the sunken door-step, “yet it must have been rather a nice old place in its day. Shall we go in?”

“Why not? The hants won’t be waiting for us outside.”

“They won’t be inside either, unless I miss my guess.”

“That’s what we came ‘for to see.’”

The sagging front door did not yield to their efforts to open it. “Probably is nailed up,” suggested Mabel. “Let’s go around to the back.” This they did, and found an entrance through a low door, which led into a shed, which, in turn, opened into a large kitchen where a battered stove and some broken chairs stood. “It’s evident that no one has lived here for a long time,” remarked Mabel, looking around.

“No one but spiders,” returned Ellen, looking up at the cobwebs which draped the corners of the room. “Let’s go on, Mabel.”

They went from room to room, finding only a few bits of old furniture, and hearing only the tap-tap of the gaunt branch upon the roof, the creak of broken shutters, and the whir of wings in the chimney.

“Swallows,” exclaimed Ellen, “chimney-swifts they call them. Maybe they are the ghosts.”

Mabel opened a door which disclosed a flight of steps leading to the attic, but she closed it quickly. “Don’t go up,” she cried, as something came swooping toward her. “The house has bats in its belfry.”

Ellen laughed and turned toward a cupboard whose door she opened. “A discovery! A discovery!” she cried. “Come here, Mabel. See what I’ve found.”

Mabel hurried over to the corner where Ellen stood examining something she held in her hand. “What is it? What is it?” Mabel inquired.

“A card with a name and a date. Some one has been here this year before us. See.”

Mabel took the card and read, “Compliments to the ghost.” Then followed the initials R. M., the date, and the engraved name Robert MacDonald. “What a lark!” she exclaimed. “I wonder who Robert is. He has an imagination, whoever he may be.”

“Let’s write something on the back of the card and leave it,” suggested Ellen. “We’ll come back some day and see what happens.”

“Done,” agreed Mabel.

After consultation they decided to write: “Thanks for compliments. With hopes for a better acquaintance, The Ghost.”

“That will whet Robert’s curiosity if he ever comes here again,” declared Mabel.

“And it is a sort of adventure for us,” responded Ellen. “I rather hope he will come again, don’t you, Mabel?”

“Yes, for it will be sort of exciting for us to follow up the affair. We must make it as mysterious as possible, and never, never let on that we have anything to do with it.”

They laid the card back on the dusty shelf and left the gloomy house, laughing and excited in the possession of a secret.

The summer cottages were beginning to fill up, guests were arriving at the boarding-houses, consequently there was always a crowd at the post-office when the mail was sorted. The steamboat which brought it had just steamed off when the girls reached the long flight of steps which led to the wharf. They threaded their way through the crowd which was thronging the small store. Most took advantage of the hour to do their marketing, since fresh supplies generally came on the boat, so the boxes and crates received attention until it was time for the little post-office window to be opened.

Ellen and Mabel took their places in line. A young man, looking over his shoulder, stepped aside. “Take my place,” he said; “I’m not in a hurry.” He raised his hat and walked off while they moved up, and presently, loaded up with letters, papers, two bottles of milk, and a box of strawberries, they started for home.

“That was a nice, polite somebody,” remarked Mabel; “I wonder who he is.”

“Robert MacDonald maybe,” returned Ellen laughing.

“Wouldn’t it be funny if he were? I suppose we could find out. Would you ask?”

“Oh, no, don’t; it would spoil our secret. Let’s keep up the mystery for a while longer. If it should be he, we would feel sort of conscious; and if it isn’t, there is no harm done.”

“I reckon you’re right. I rather like his looks, whatever his name may be. We’ll leave it this way: if we meet him around, we’ll probably find out all about him. If he should prove to be Robert, we can keep our own counsel and he will have no way of identifying us, so there you are. There may nothing more come of it, for it is quite likely that he will never pay another visit to the haunted house.”

“I shall be really disappointed if he doesn’t. It would be such fun if he were to answer our message.”

“I wouldn’t count on it.”

“Well, I shall try to restrain my curiosity for a week, but no longer. A week from to-day I go again. What do you say?”

“I say we don’t set any time, but just leave the whole thing to chance. We’ll go again when it’s convenient, whether it be to-morrow, next week, or the week after. It is more fun to have it chancy like that.”

Ellen agreed that it would be so, and they went on to deliver their supplies to Miss Rindy.

“We brought a box of strawberries, but there wasn’t any cream to-day. Mr. Nevins says it must have been put off on one of the other islands,” Ellen explained.

“Dear me!” exclaimed Miss Rindy. “That’s just the way it goes. Yesterday they lost our mackerel out of the wagon and some one picked it up on the road, and to-day this happens. Well, we can have strawberry shortcake for supper, and as soon as I can get around to it I’ll go up to Portland and lay in a lot of supplies, things that can’t be had here. It is rather disconcerting, but I’ve been up against worse situations over in France.”

“I think it’s rather fun not to know exactly what you are going to have, something like a game in which you don’t know just how you will come out.”

“That’s one way to look at it,” returned Miss Rindy. “Suppose you turn to and hull these strawberries while Beulah is making the shortcake; then I can attend to the rest of the supper. Did you have a good walk?”

“Fine,” Ellen answered, but she said no word of the haunted house.

CHAPTER XVI

THE BRIDGE

But a week was not allowed to elapse before the two girls saw an opportunity of crossing the bridge again to make a second visit to the haunted house. Miss Rindy one evening declared her intention of spending the next day in Portland. She had now almost recovered from her accident, and with the aid of her stick could get about perfectly with scarce a sign of a limp.

“Beulah will look after you,” she told the two girls. “She knows what to do, and if anything goes wrong, you, Ellen, can set it right. It won’t hurt you to take a little responsibility once in a while.”

“It seems to me that I have proved that I can,” retorted Ellen.

“Well, perhaps you have, in a measure, but that was at home; it is different here. One should be prepared to meet any emergency, no matter where.”

Ellen shrugged her shoulders. Why couldn’t Cousin Rindy give her the credit for having rather good judgment? However, she said nothing, but speeded her on her way, and then returned to Mabel, who had not risen for so early a breakfast as was necessary for Miss Rindy.

“What a lazybones I am,” said Mabel as she came down to find Miss Rindy gone and Ellen finished with her breakfast. “Gran always indulged me, so that if I wanted to linger in bed she never said a word. I am afraid I am not sufficiently grateful to Gran, but I don’t know that girls usually possess that virtue. We take what is done for us as a matter of course, expect it as our right. You are the only truly grateful young person I know, Ellen.”

“I? You don’t know me. I feel mighty sassy sometimes, and express my opinions accordingly, though I try never to forget what Cousin Rindy has done for me. If she were a really, truly parent, I might feel different, but as it is I consider that I would be a disgraceful ingrate if I lost sight of my benefits.”

“Lots of girls wouldn’t be so particular. It isn’t the modern fashion to show respect to your elders. I know girls who call down their parents as if they were the children and the girls were the parents. Oh, yes; boys, too, generally think they know it all. They call any one of a past generation a back number, non-progressive, and all that. I don’t quite agree with Gran when she says: ‘Young people think old people are fools; old people know young ones are;’ that always makes me mad, chiefly, I suppose, because it is said at a time when I want my own way.”

“I do suppose we should allow some value to experience,” replied Ellen thoughtfully. “How will you have your eggs, Mabel?”

“Oh, you dear thing, are you attending to my breakfast? You have made fresh coffee and toast, too. Where is Beulah?”

“She is attending to things up-stairs. You know I don’t mind doing such things for you, Mabel.”

“Consider yourself kissed for that speech. The eggs? Oh, yes, suppose you scramble them; you always do them so beautifully that way.”

“A bouquet for me in return for mine,” said Ellen laughing, as she went out to the kitchen. “What are we going to do with ourselves to-day?” she asked as she came back with the eggs.

“Why, let me see. Oh, Ellen, why isn’t this just our chance to go to the haunted house?”

“Of course; you’ve said it, child. By the way, have you heard that the polite young man of the post-office incident is not Robert MacDonald? He and some others are camping on a neighboring island. He just happened to be here that day.”

“Who told you all that?”

“Cap’n Belah; you know he keeps wind of everything that goes on. I met him on my way from the boat this morning after seeing Cousin Rindy off, and he asked me facetiously why I wasn’t keeping my weather eye out for ‘them boys over on Halsey’s Island, likely-lookin’ chaps.’ ‘What boys?’ I asked. ‘Do you know their names?’ Wal, he cal’lated that he couldn’t name ’em all, but the one that came over oftenest for supplies went by name of Tom Clayton. They cruised around consid’rable in a motor-boat, there was something like half a dozen of ’em, and they had h’isted tents, was kind of soldiering, he cal’lated.”

Mabel laughed at Ellen’s imitation. “Well, you have done well in gathering in your sheaves so early in the morning. Anything more?”

“I asked if one was named Robert MacDonald. I couldn’t resist that question, Mabel. But Cap’n Belah ‘disremembered,’ so I didn’t gain anything by ‘satiable curiosity.’ Shall we go this morning or this afternoon?”

“This afternoon, I think, for I must write some letters this morning.”

“Same here, as Clyde says. I must write to Caro or she will feel neglected. I wish the dear child wouldn’t be so jealous of you.”

“Jealousy is a mean trait, on a par with ingratitude. One is caused by an inflated ego, the other by a thoughtless one.”

“Where did you learn so much?”

“Read it in a book.”

“Book spoke the truth. To be jealous one must consider one’s self worthy of first place, of satisfying every side of the other’s nature, and possessing so many excellent traits that nobody else could stand the same chance in another’s affections.”

“Spoken like a very oracle. Wise little noddle, yours is, Ellen. You think real big thoughts.”

“I’ve had plenty of time for such, and have not lived in the frivolous atmosphere that some others have,” returned Ellen saucily.

“Out upon your frivolous atmosphere! Am I not doing all I can to escape from it? I see where I shall become a perfect prig if I allow myself to indulge in such moralizing. Away with priggishness, jealousy, and all such stuff. To-day is ours for romance!”

“Ah, yes, romance!” echoed Ellen.

They made an early start that afternoon, for it may be said that Mabel was just as curious as Ellen. The air blew fresh from the sea, so that they did not need to loiter by the way because of undue heat. They reached the house without adventure. All was as silent, as depressing, as before, but this time the two did not stop to explore, but made straight for the cupboard, which Ellen reached first.

“It’s gone!” she cried. “The card is gone!”

Mabel peered over her friend’s shoulder at the empty shelf, but presently she looked down to spy something lying on the floor. She swooped down upon it and held a scrap of paper high over her head. “Look! Look!” she exclaimed. “It blew down when we opened the cupboard.”

They raced to the nearest window, the better to see what was written. Mabel read aloud:

“Greetings to thee, ghost, or shall we say ghostess? For I much suspect thee to be the latter, and not a disembodied spirit, elusive though thou art. Wilt thou not materialize and appear in the flesh to

“R. M.”

“Isn’t it perfectly lovely?” cried Ellen excitedly. “Do let’s answer it. Of course we must not divulge our identity, but we can answer. O dear! I haven’t a bit of paper, though I do happen to have a pencil.”

“Let’s look around; perhaps we can find something that will do.”

“Good idea.”

Mabel began her search, looking in every room, but for some reason every scrap of paper had been disposed of in some way. “Used to kindle a fire,” Ellen surmised. “I’ll look around out of doors.”

She went out, but rollicking winds had borne away anything like paper, supposing any had ever lodged there. But presently a brilliant idea struck her as she caught sight of a couple of logs lying in an outhouse, too heavy, perhaps, to be confiscated by any boys who might have played there. From one of these logs Ellen stripped a piece of birch bark, the inner side of which was smooth and clean. She bore it indoors in triumph. “See what I found,” she said as she extended her prize. “We can write on it as the Indians do.”

“Good Injun,” said Mabel. “What are you going to write? I’m out of this because it’s your find.”

Ellen demurred, but Mabel was firm, and finally Ellen wrote:

“Good day to you, fair sir! Seek not to penetrate the mysteries. Desire not the unattainable. Flesh may meet flesh, but spirit cannot behold spirit unless drawn by some heavenly means.

“THE GHOST.”

She read it to Mabel, who immediately gave praise. “It’s fine,” she declared; “so delightfully mystifying and obscure. I’ll venture to say that Robert will be devoured with curiosity and won’t waste any time in answering.”

“Wouldn’t it be fatal if some one else should find it?” said Ellen. “I hope no one will. We’d better get away for fear somebody might be lurking in ambush.”

They deposited the message on the shelf and hurried off, giggling and self-conscious, but making up their minds that their correspondent must be one of the campers on Halsey’s Island.

A week slipped away before the girls found another chance to cross the bridge. The little neck of land upon which the old house stood contained no other dwelling, and it was seldom visited by the natives, who shunned it because of its uncanny reputation, while the summer residents found more beautiful spots to attract them. Beatty’s Island was now quite full of visitors, the cottages all open, the boarding-houses crowded. Groups of watchers perched on the rocks, never weary of looking at the waves rolling in. The road was no longer a lonely one. The dispensers of ice-cream and delectable drinks were kept busy in the Little Gray Shop, while the delivery trucks dashed up and down the road at a threatening rate.

The girls had made a number of acquaintances and were much in demand. Picnics, suppers on the rocks, motor-boat parties to some farther island where shore dinners were a feature, informal teas at the cottage of some neighbor, all these took up their time. Ellen was appealed to when her musical ability became known, and every Sunday she took her place at the small organ in the little church.

But in all this time they had not come to know either Robert MacDonald or Tom Clayton. Sometimes as they skimmed past Halsey’s Island in a motor-boat they caught sight of a group of young men busied at some employment outside the tents, or hoisting the sails of a small boat which rode at anchor near by.

“It seems as if our secret would forever remain a secret,” remarked Mabel as the two neared their destination one August afternoon.

“It is much more romantic the way it is. We might be frightfully disappointed in Robert if we were to meet him. I don’t know that I really want to. Do you?” Ellen asked.

“I am not sure. It would be rather fun to see him without his knowing who we are; then we could decide whether we wanted to continue this funny correspondence.”

“Maybe we could manage that, though there may be no answer to our last effusion. Let’s hurry up and find out.”

But when they reached the room and opened the cupboard door there was another note which they eagerly read. It ran:

“Hail to thee, blythe spirit! A wood-nymph thou art, I know now by thy birch-bark sign. The hollow tree must be thy dwelling place. Mortal though I be, I fain would have speech with thee. Can I not lure thee forth by some subtle strain? Music is a language common to all. When and how can we meet?

“R. M.”

The girls sat down on the worn steps which led up-stairs, and began to confer upon a plan of procedure. First one and then the other made suggestions, whispering and glancing up once in a while, as if they feared discovery. At last, amid much laughter, they decided upon a plot.

“It’s lucky I brought paper this time,” said Mabel, producing a small pad, “unless you’d rather continue the birch-bark episode.”

“No, now that we have come down to practical facts, let’s have the paper, and you write this time; that will make it the more confusing, although I disguised my writing,—printed the words; it was easier to do it on the birch bark.”

They left the note in the usual place and went off chuckling.

“We’ll have to tell Cousin Rindy,” said Ellen.

“And a lot of others,” returned Mabel. “That’s a picturesque old house, Ellen; it’s a pity some one doesn’t buy it and fix it up. The stable and hen-house are in pretty good order; if the house were painted and had a new roof, it could be made a pretty place.”

“The ghost would have to be exorcised before any one would undertake to do the repairs,” Ellen answered. “It would be a fine place for an artist; the stable could be turned into a studio, and think what a view there is.”

“True. I might buy it, but Gran would be scandalized if I turned it into a studio for an artist; she thinks they are a godless lot, and musicians are not far behind. She doesn’t half approve of my visits to Aunt Nell and her unconventional friends. She thinks Aunt Nell is old enough to discriminate, but I am a mere infant who should be safeguarded against the wiles of that wild Bohemian set, as she calls them.”

Ellen laughed. “Respectable Bohemia is one of the loveliest places in the world, but there is a set that goes to the limit, I must confess, though I don’t think even that is any worse than the fast set in the social world.”

“Don’t I know that? It is because of what I have seen in that fast set that I am sick of society in general, and want to get out into something better. I never saw any drinking, gambling, or immoral doings among Aunt Nell’s artist friends. Think of dear, good Mr. Barstow, the Austins, and your own parents, all such sincere, high-minded, single-hearted people. It is among such that I want to cast my lot.”

“Me, too,” responded Ellen cordially. And here the talk ended.

As soon as they returned they poured forth the tale of their adventure. Miss Rindy listened attentively, but with disapproval written on her face. “You don’t mean to say that you two have been carrying on with a strange man,” she reproved when the tale was done.

“Well, it hasn’t gone very far,” answered Mabel cheerfully; “and the creature wouldn’t know us from a side of sole leather if he were to meet us in broad daylight. We know him as one Robert MacDonald, but he hasn’t the faintest idea who we are. Naturally we are wild to see what he looks like, and we have evolved a scheme which we want you to help us carry out.”

“You want me?” Miss Rindy looked shocked.

“Yes, please, ma’am,” said Ellen meekly. “When you learn our plan I am sure you won’t object, and that you’ll fall into it.”

“I have no intention of falling into disgrace at my age,” replied Miss Rindy tartly.

Both girls laughed. “Softly, softly, my good lady,” cried Mabel. “Just you listen to our scheme before you get wrathy.”

“Don’t kick before you’re spurred, as you sometimes say to me,” Ellen joined in. “We’ve shown you the correspondence up to date, all except the note which we left in the cupboard to-day. Can you remember what you wrote, Mabel?”

“I think so. It was something like this. ‘I will meet you on the middle of the bridge on Friday afternoon at four o’clock. I will wear a white dress with a bunch of goldenrod in my belt, so you may know me.’”

“And you mean to do this bold thing?” Miss Rindy was still indignant.

“Yes, we mean to do it, and we expect at least a dozen to do the same thing, you among the number. In so doing we shall see what our young man looks like, while he won’t have the faintest idea which of the dozen is his correspondent.”

Then Miss Rindy threw back her head and laughed. “Clever, clever girls,” she cried. “Of course I’ll join the gang. I wouldn’t miss the fun of seeing that young man’s expression for anything.”

“We must go on the war-path this very afternoon,” decided Mabel, “for we want to see how many we can muster in; the more the merrier.”

This they did, and came back with the report that at least twenty had promised to join them, so that when the afternoon came the little company was ready for the march. It was a varied assortment of sizes, ages, and styles. All wore white hats, which covered their hair, and sprays of goldenrod stuck in their belts. On the stroke of four they advanced in a body to the middle of the bridge where they were met, not by a single individual, but by as many as six young men, who passed them nonchalantly, while one of them casually remarked, “Must be going on a picnic.”

“More like the chorus from the opera of ‘Patience,’” observed another as he softly sang, “Twenty love-sick maidens we.”

The twenty moved on, stifling their laughter as best they could. “And we don’t know a man Jack among them,” whispered Mabel to Ellen.

“And probably they don’t know a woman Jenny among us,” returned Ellen.

The twenty pursued their way a little farther and then climbed down the rocks to where a motor-boat was awaiting them. Into this they entered and were borne away, leaving the young men to their own devices.

This was Miss Rindy’s idea. “I wasn’t going to have even the single one we expected to meet, tagging after us to see where we lived, any one of us,” she said.

CHAPTER XVII

AN UNEXPECTED MEETING

It was only a day or two after this that Ellen, going for the mail, met Cap’n Belah on the road. He grinned when he saw her. “Wal, I hear you women folks met up with your match the other afternoon,” he said.

“I think you might call it a drawn game,” Ellen retorted; “neither party got the better of the other.”

“That was a right cute trick of you folks, going and coming in a motor-bo-at so they couldn’t get their bearings,” the cap’n went on. “If they’d hove to in their own craft, you couldn’t have got away so spry. I snum I never see a bo-at go slicker than she does, slips through the water like a fish; howsomever, you got the best of the boys that time.”

“It was Cousin Rindy’s idea. She couldn’t walk so far, and the boat made it the easiest way to get to the bridge with the whole party.”

“So ’twas. Wal, you won’t have to try any more tricks. I’d know as you’ve heard that the boys has sailed for another port, picked up stakes and left Halsey’s, lugged away all their dunnage, too.”

Ellen hadn’t heard, but she did not betray her ignorance, only asking, “When did they leave?”

“Struck their tents and sot sail early this morning, cal’lated they might come back another year, but, land! you can’t count on young folks. Step in and have a word with my woman, can’t ye?”

But Ellen had no notion of stopping, eager as she was to carry home her news. Mabel saw her coming and met her on the porch. “I have a sad, sad piece of information for you,” Ellen exclaimed. “We shall never have the bliss of meeting Robert MacDonald. He and all his comrades have left for parts unknown.”

“Really?” Mabel looked her surprise. “Do you suppose they were so chagrined at the success of our little manœuvre that they couldn’t stand the jeers of the populace? We did get the best of them.”

“It was diamond cut diamond, it seems to me. Well, that episode is finished. It was fun while it lasted, but it reminds me of some of these modern stories that leave you hanging up in the air. Adieu, Robert!” She kissed her hand in the direction of Halsey’s Island, and the two went in.

“Do you know that at last I have persuaded Miss Rindy to go off on a spree with me?” said Mabel as she began to open her mail. “We’re going up to Portland for the day. You know I’ve been begging her all summer, and at last she is going, just to get rid of my teasing, she says. We’re going to ride all over town, do a little shopping, have lunch at that nice hotel, in the dining-room at the top where you get such a lovely view, and then we’ll go to a movie. Isn’t the prospect sufficiently alluring to tempt you to join us?”

“Leave this lovely island just to spend the day in a city? No, thank you, ma’am. Moreover, two is company; three is a crowd. You two will have a much better time without me, and it will be exciting to see what you bring home.”

“I accept your point of view, but don’t say you were not invited.”

So the matter was settled to Ellen’s satisfaction, and the next morning saw her two housemates off for what Mabel was pleased to call their “spree.” Ellen busied herself about the house for an hour, then she went down to the rocks with her writing materials, accomplished a letter to Caro, and one to Jeremy Todd; then Beulah called her to dinner, so the morning went. Beulah, it may be said, had made the acquaintance of several maids of like color, and enjoyed with them hilarious laughter, mirthful pokes and digs when some appreciated joke was made, and feasts either on the rocks or off in the woods.

“Me an’ some other colored ladies is plannin’ to have a little fessible in de woods dis afternoon,” she confided to Ellen. “Miss Rindy, she say she don’t min’. I be back in time to git supper. Yuh don’t keer, does yuh, Miss Ellen, if I leaves yuh to yo’ own wicked revices?”

Ellen laughed. “I don’t mind in the least, so long as you’re back in time to get supper. If I’m not here, you know where to find the key.”

“We goin’ have a gran’ feas’,” Beulah gave further information; “ice-cream an’ bananas, an’ peanuts and half a watermillion.”

“Take care you don’t make yourself ill,” Ellen warned.

“Law, Miss Ellen, it tek mo’n dem little things to discommoderate mah stummick. Miss Rindy say we has lobsters fo’ supper, an’ I sho’ wants room fo’ dem. I sutt’nly does decline to lobsters.”

“I think you’d better decline them altogether after all that other mess,” responded Ellen, who was busy formulating her own plans for the afternoon. She had just conceived the idea of paying a parting visit to the haunted house. It was barely possible, she considered, that a farewell message had been left by the unknown Robert. It would do no harm to see.

She set off on her walk, making her way leisurely along the shore, deciding that it would be the more interesting route when one was alone. She stopped to look in the little pools where starfish, sea-urchins, and various other sea creatures made their abode. From a pebbly beach she picked up two or three talisman stones, gray, banded about by a dark streak. Here, too, seaweeds, brilliant green and feathery, pink or yellow, attracted her. “Mabel and I must come here and gather some,” she told herself.

Leaving the beach, she climbed the rocks, cut across a field, and reached the road which led to the bridge. There was no one in sight when she came up to the haunted house, which she entered in the usual way, by means of a back door. She tiptoed across the big room and opened the cupboard by the side of the great fireplace, but before she could look to see if anything was there she started back, for the strains of a violin came clearly to her ears. She looked wildly around for a way of escape, for the music was coming nearer and nearer. It was just outside! It was at the door! Ellen rushed toward the stairway, and had just set foot on the first step when a voice said: “Don’t run away. I am perfectly harmless.”

She turned to face an entirely strange young man. For at least ten seconds the two stood and looked at each other; then the young man rushed forward, holding out his hand. “It is Cronette! Of course it is. I forgot, you may not be able to recognize me, but you will recognize your old friend violin.” He held it out to her and she took it mechanically.

“You are—you are——” she stammered.

“Reed Marshall, your old friend, Cronine. Naturally you don’t remember my looks, but you haven’t forgotten me, have you?”

“Oh, no; oh, no,” Ellen recovered herself. “How could I forget you? But I never really knew what you looked like.”

“But I couldn’t forget what you looked like, once having seen you. Isn’t this the greatest luck? Let’s sit down and tell each other the story of our lives. How do you happen to be ’way down East? I am that glad to see you that I could dash over to the Amen corner and shout Glory! Where are you staying?”

“Over on Beatty’s Island with Miss Wickham. She has a cottage there, and Cousin Rindy and I are spending the summer with her. Where are you staying?”

“Here, right here. I came up with a crowd of fellows to camp out on a little island off here. The rest of the bunch had to leave, but Tom Clayton and I skirmished around to find a spot where we could bunk. We are both daffy about this coast, and want to do some sketching. We happened on this old place, which we are able to get for a mere song. The house threatened leaks and hants and sich, so we decided it would be more cozy if we fixed up the stable, hen-house, or whatever it is called. We have begged, borrowed, stolen, and bought sundry and varisome things to make us comfortable, and we’re going to stay on till the ghost gets too much for us.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Ellen. “It is all quite wonderful, isn’t it?” She was still bewildered at the turn of events.

“I’ll say it is, but most wonderful of all is this running across you. By the way, Cronette, what brought you over here? Very few ever come around this way.”

The color flamed up into Ellen’s face as she stammered, “I—I—just was curious to—to—see——”

“The ghost? You don’t believe in ghos’es, do you?”

Ellen’s face was still flaming. “I—yes—no—I don’t know,” she answered in confusion.

Reed regarded her steadfastly for a moment; then he said, “Cronette, honest Injun, can it be possible that you are my wood-nymph?”

“Your wood-nymph?” she spoke in surprise. “Why, that was Robert MacDonald,” and then again the color surged up into her face as she realized that she had said too much.

It was Reed’s turn to look surprised. “Robert MacDonald? Who is the bird? Oh, I say, Cronette, what’s the use of beating about the bush? Tell your uncle all about it and I’ll ’fess up, too.”

Ellen hesitated, but at further urging she said: “We, Mabel and I, came over to see the haunted house. We found a card, Mr. Robert MacDonald’s card. On it was written ‘Compliments to the ghost,’ and so we drew our own conclusions. We thought it would be a lark to answer it, which we did. Perhaps you know the rest, and can tell me who is Robert MacDonald.”

Reed looked puzzled for a moment, then he struck his forehead tragically. “Dolt that I am!” he exclaimed. “I see it now. I didn’t happen to have a card of my own that first time I visited this mansion, so I took one that I happened to have in my pocket, one that a fellow gave me some time ago. I actually had forgotten his name, and had no intention of forging his initials when I signed my own, which are the same, you see.”

“Then we shall never meet Robert,” rejoined Ellen half regretfully.

Reed laughed. “Are you then so disappointed? I’m pleased to pieces myself. To think that you should be my wood-nymph is the jolliest sort of a surprise, and we’ll keep it a secret all to ourselves.”

“How can we keep it a secret when all those men know?”

“What men?”

“All those you were with on Halsey’s Island, and that met us in a body on the bridge.”

Reed threw back his head and shouted. “That’s one on you, Cronette, for I didn’t tell them a thing except that I had a date with a female person whom I didn’t know, and until I saw her I thought we’d better march in company. Well, you know how it came out, and if the boys didn’t jolly me well, you miss your guess. That was some blind game, Cronette, and I must acknowledge myself the loser. In all that horde of white-robed, goldenrod-decked females I never looked for you; even your hair didn’t show under that hat. By the way, now is my chance to get a sketch of you, the chance I missed last winter. May I make it? We’re old friends, you know. You’ll let me come over to see you, won’t you, and may I bring Tom along? He’s an all-right fellow, lots of talent and a great pal of mine.”

Ellen gave her consent. She had liked Tom’s looks, and recalled his little act of courtesy in the post-office. She told Reed about it.

“Just like Tom,” he responded. “He’s always looking out for the other fellow. At this very moment he is off helping his cousin to establish herself at Beatty’s. She has taken a cottage there for a month. Nice little woman she is; you’ll like her. Queer, Cronette, but it seems as if I had known you all my life, although this is really only the second time we have met.”

Ellen considered this for a moment before she said, “Probably it is because we both know Don Pedro so well, and then you know the violin is a common bond.”

“It’s quite as if I had adopted a member of your family, isn’t it? No end of comfort it is, too,—quite like a brother. You know the song, ‘Fiddle and I’?”

“I know it and love it. I am very glad you have the violin,” she said after a moment’s silence. “It was very generous of you to buy it.”

“Why, no, it wasn’t; I wanted it in the worst way. Would you like to hear it again?”

“Oh, please.”

He picked it up and held it lovingly as he played several short bits. While not a finished performer he played with some skill and much feeling, and so absorbed were both in the performance that neither noticed the time till suddenly the boat whistled at the landing next to Beatty’s.

Ellen started up. “Goodness!” she exclaimed. “The boat will be here in another minute or so, and I must run for it. I promised to meet my friends and help with their parcels.”

“I’ll go with you,” Reed stated. “I must lock up this treasure first, but I won’t be a minute. Don’t wait; I’ll catch up.”

Ellen started at a swift pace, but Reed’s long legs bore him to her side before the bridge was reached. The boat was turning a point in sight, and the whistle for Beatty’s blew before they arrived at the long flight of steps. Down these they raced, arriving at the wharf just as the boat’s gangplank was lowered.

Miss Rindy and Mabel came ashore, laden with bundles, some of which Ellen took possession of. “You’re all out of breath,” Miss Rindy commented, “and your face is as red as a beet. What have you been doing?”

“Running for the boat. We were late getting here.”

“We? What we?”

“Mr. Marshall and I.” Ellen turned to present Reed, who loaded himself with bundles in spite of Miss Rindy’s protests.

“What’s a fellow good for if he can’t be useful once in a while?” he replied, smiling. “Hello! there’s old Tom; I’ll press him into service. Any more dunnage, Miss Crump?”

“There’s a box somewhere, but that can be sent up.”

“No need when here are two donkeys to carry it. Come here, Tom,” he shouted as his friend was walking off.

Introductions were made in short order, and then the party turned toward home. “Shall we wait for the mail?” asked Ellen.

“Don’t bother about it,” replied Tom. “We’ll bring it to you later. My cousin will want hers anyway.”

“But it will give you extra trouble and a longer walk,” Miss Rindy was ready again to protest.

“What’s a walk more or less?” remarked Reed. “It’s no distance to your cottage.”

“How do you know?” asked Miss Rindy sharply.

“Your cousin has just told me that it is the second house beyond the church,” answered Reed triumphantly, with a sly glance at Ellen.

Tom, with box on shoulder, was keeping pace with Mabel, while the other three followed, Reed the bundle bearer. He spoke truly when he said the distance was short, for in a few minutes they had reached the cottage where packages and box were deposited, and the two young men took their leave, promising to bring the mail later.

As soon as they had stepped off the porch Mabel seized Ellen’s hands. “Where did you meet him? Who is he? Tell me quick. That Mr. Clayton came on the boat. He got on at South Heartwell. He is a dear. I’m crazy about him. He is such an unaffected ingenuous sort of lamb. What do you think was his first question? Did I know how to make clam chowder? He said they wanted to dig some clams, and he could make the chowder if he had a good recipe. Oh, he is a babe, a darling infant. I never met any one quite like him.”

Ellen laughed. “You certainly are bowled over, Mab. I’ll tell you all about it as soon as I get a chance. It’s a long story. Now you must have your supper. I know you must be starved. That trip on the boat does give one such an appetite.”

“I wish it were clam chowder instead of lobster,” said Mabel as they sat down, “for then we could ask Mr. Clayton to have supper with us and see if he likes the kind of chowder we have.”

“As if any one could possibly not like our kind; it’s the best ever,” retorted Ellen. “You can ask him for some other time; he won’t melt away.”

“How do I know what he will or won’t do? If he stayed to-night, in common decency he’d have to come back.”

“Then why not ask him to stay?” Miss Rindy spoke up. “I suppose he might put up with lobsters; they are not usually despised, and there is an abundance for all, your young friend, too, Ellen. It will be mighty handy to have them open that box.”

The upshot of the matter was that when the young men returned with the mail they were urged to stay, the supper was supplemented by various supplies which the shoppers had brought from Portland, and all went merry as the traditional marriage bell. Miss Rindy promised to make chowder for them if they would supply the clams, and this offer brought forth an invitation to come to the studio and partake of a supper when the chowder should be the center of the feast.

“I don’t suppose you have a place to cook it, or anything to cook it in,” scoffed Miss Rindy.

“We have an excellent oil stove, a large iron pot, and various other utensils,” Reed boasted. “Suppose you all make a preliminary visit and take account of stock.”

“And if anything is lacking, I can borrow it from my cousin,” Tom remarked.

“Or, if the supply isn’t equal to the demand, we can bring our own dishes from here,” promised Mabel.

“It’s a pretty long walk for an old limp-it like me,” objected Miss Rindy.

“Limpet? You’re no limpet; they cling close to the rocks; I’m surprised at you making such a feeble joke,” said Mabel merrily.

“I didn’t mean it for a joke; it’s a solemn fact,” replied Miss Rindy plaintively.

“Oh, you needn’t walk,” declared Reed. “We’ll come around in the boat and get you. There is a good little landing just below the bridge, as I believe you are aware.”

Then every one laughed, and Reed declared he would like to make a study of Ellen in a white dress and with goldenrod somewhere in the picture.

Then Tom insisted that he must do a like study of Mabel, who blushed and stammered that she was not paintable.

“Oh, aren’t you? I should say you were.” Tom squinted up his eyes and looked at her, causing greater confusion on her part.

“I speak to do Miss Crump, too,” cried Reed; “she’d make a stunning subject, so much character to get.”

“There you go,” exclaimed Tom; “I was going to speak for her, but I was going about it more diplomatically. I didn’t mean to blurt out my wishes in that bald way.”

“What’s the matter with both of us painting her if she will be so utterly angelic as to sit for us?” said Reed.

“Go along with you,” cried Miss Rindy. “The idea of asking a creature like me to sit; I’m no beauty.”

“Dear lady,” said Tom, “there is something better than magazine-cover beauty, and that thing you have.”

“You’ve said it, boy,” Reed agreed. “Come, Miss Rindy, I may call you that, mayn’t I? You are going to be good and sit for us. We won’t keep you long, and we’ll do anything in the world you ask of us, split wood, run errands, any old thing, won’t we, Tom?”

“Very well, since you have eliminated the claim for beauty I’ll promise, and you can begin your tasks by opening that box you brought up.”

“That’s easy. Lead us to it,” said Reed.

So was begun an intimacy, the results of which were far-reaching.

“When we said we didn’t know what might be around the corner, we must have had a subconscious awareness of those two boys,” said Mabel, as the two girls parted for the night. “It’s a lovely world, Ellen.”

“It’s a lovely island,” sighed Ellen, “but the summer is flying too fast.”

“‘Gather rosebuds while ye may,’” quoted Mabel. “It’s the best summer I ever had, and I mean to make the most of what is left of it.”

“Meaning?”

“Draw your own conclusions, miss. I’m not referring to ghosts.”

CHAPTER XVIII

A NIGHT OF ADVENTURE

There were not many young people summering on Beatty’s Island. Ellen and Mabel could claim acquaintance with perhaps half a dozen girls of their own age, and not so many boys, youths about to enter college, or, having finished high school, waiting a chance to enter into business. Dolly and Cora Dix lived nearest. They were of the flapperish type, dressed and looked the character, were rather insipid and silly. Farther away lived Claudia and Lucile Bond, who affected knickers, were very sporty, and talked a great deal about “expressing themselves,” used the latest slang, and liked to be considered mannish. The Bonds’ nearest neighbors were the Truesdells. There were three girls in this family, Hettie, Gertrude, and Cassie, the youngest being Cassie. These were nice unaffected girls, and their brother, Alvin, a lad of eighteen, was much like them. Theirs was a hospitable house, always something going on. No amount of trouble was too much when it came to entertaining, and all was done so easily, for every one took a hand in preparations.

It was to the Truesdells’ that Ellen and Mabel went most frequently, joining forces with them when it came to excursions, picnics, and the like, and sharing with them any news which might come their way.

Therefore they were not slow to tell them of the late experiences with Tom and Reed. Hettie waved to the two girls as she saw them coming down the road. “Join us on the rocks, can’t you?” she called. “We’re going to have supper on the rocks this evening.”

“So sorry, Miss Truesdell,” Ellen answered, “but we have a previous engagement.”

“Who’s stealing our thunder?” asked Hettie. “I’ll bet it is those Dix girls; they’re always butting in when we propose anything.” There was no love lost between the Truesdell girls and the Dixes.

“You’re ’way off,” declared Mabel; “the Dix girls have nothing to do with it; they’d better not. No, my dear, we are going over to Minor’s Island to make clam chowder for two delectable youths.”

“Who are they? Who are they?” Hettie stopped whisking the mayonnaise dressing she was preparing.

“Tell her, Ellen. They are your discovery.”

This Ellen proceeded to do, having an attentive listener, who at the end of the tale exclaimed: “What luck! It is the most romantic story I have heard for an age. Are you going to keep the ‘delectable youths’ all to yourselves, or are you going to let the rest of us in on the fun?”

“Now, Hettie Truesdell, what do you take us for?” cried Mabel. “Of course we want you to meet them. To-day’s feast is their affair, so we can’t ask any one to that, but we’ll get up something when we can share them with you.”

Hettie laughed. “How pleased they would be to hear us talk of sharing them, as if we were cannibals. Why can’t they join us on the trip up to Goose Island that we have planned for day after to-morrow?”

“Why not, indeed? We’ll propose it to them. Farewell, Hettie; we’ll see you to-morrow and tell you what happens.”

They went off to join Miss Rindy, who had gone ahead to meet the boys at the wharf, and the small company was soon landed at little Minor’s Island. As they entered what Tom and Reed were pleased to call “the studio,” the girls looked around in surprise, for the boys had made a most attractive place out of the shabby little building. On the walls they had tacked building paper, which made an excellent background for a number of sketches. They had resurrected an old armchair from the haunted house, had covered it with stuff of pleasant tone, had made a rough table and two benches, had covered the floor with rag rugs, and had put up shelves on which two brass candlesticks and some bits of pottery were placed as ornaments.

“You are perfect wonders!” exclaimed Mabel. “You remember what this place looked like when we first saw it, Ellen.”

“I certainly do, and it looked only fit for chickens or cows.”

“We’ve worked like Trojans,” Reed told them, “but it has been great sport. There is a lot more we can do, but we shall not attempt it this year. We sleep in the loft, have two bunks there, and here is our kitchenette.” He opened a door into a small compartment where stood a blue-flame stove, a few dishes, and some cooking utensils; a wooden tray held the clams.

In a few minutes all fell to work and the chowder was made ready, proving as satisfactory as expected. Bread and butter, fruit, coffee, and a large chocolate cake completed the meal.

“And where did you get the cake?” asked Ellen. “I know you didn’t make it.”

“I should say not. We bribed Mrs. Dan Ferry to make it. Most of her boarders have gone and she could take time to ‘accommodate’ us. She’s hot stuff when it comes to cooking, you know.”

A merry meal it was, and was ended as the sun went down, leaving rosy clouds reflected in the water. “It’s as if a heavenly rosebush had been shaken down,” declared Ellen. “And, oh, those opal and jade waves, and that exquisite violet and turquoise in the eastern sky! Aren’t you dying to paint it, Mr. Marshall?”

“Mr. Marshall, indeed,” he replied disgustedly. “To you I am Cronine, please remember. Yes, Cronette, I am aching to paint so much that I see that I could keep busy every hour of the day. But, I tell you, I mean to come back here, if I am alive next year. Shall you come?”

“Don’t ask me. How can I tell? I only know that it is the most wonderful summer I ever spent, and that it would be too much to expect to repeat it.”

Here Miss Rindy’s voice broke in: “Aren’t you boys going to wash all those dishes? If you’re not, we will.”

“You will not,” announced Tom, who had just emerged from the little kitchen. “I have put them in a pan, poured water over them, and there they shall stay till morning when we can tackle them. There isn’t any hot water now.”

“So that’s what you have been doing while we outside have been rhapsodizing,” said Mabel softly.

“That’s old Tom all over,” said Reed. “He is the most practical chap, hauls me down from the clouds a dozen times a day.”

“But, once down, you do your share,” declared Tom. “He goes at it like a whirlwind and gets things done while I’m thinking about them.”

They chugged back to Beatty’s in the small motor-boat, arriving at home in time to catch the last of the afterglow and to watch the moon emerge from smoky clouds.

“Those are nice boys,” remarked Miss Rindy with satisfaction. “It’s good to get among that kind again. I knew some of the same sort in France, like that Tom Clayton, always thinking of some one besides himself. I believe of the two I like him the best.” At which remark Ellen had a small feeling of resentment, although she couldn’t have told why.

The two young men were quite ready to accept the invitation to go on the trip to Goose Island. “We shall have supper there,” Ellen announced. “We’ll build a fire; then we can make coffee, fry bacon, and make those scrumptious sandwiches,—lettuce, mayonnaise, and the hot bacon between. You’ll go, of course. Cousin Rindy?”

“Indeed I will not. You know I don’t hanker after those motor-boat trips. I had enough of the water when I crossed the seas, and I only go now when I have to. No, please count me out. Who all are going?”

“The Truesdell girls, their brother Alvin, and a young married cousin with her brother, a boy about Cassie’s age. There will be ten in all, eleven if you will go.”

“No, I’ll have a nice peaceful time at home, with no young, skittish frivolers about.” Miss Rindy gave her twisted smile.

“Now, Cousin Rindy,” Ellen protested, “you know you don’t consider us skittish and frivolous, though we may be young.”

“I’m not saying what I consider, though I do say that if you are going to keep up this everlasting gadding around you’ll not be fit for much of anything by the time we get ready to leave, and won’t be in any trim for the winter.”

“Well, to-morrow will see about the last of our frolics,” said Mabel regretfully, “for Alvin leaves the day after, and there’s no one to run the boat, which will be stored for the winter. The Truesdells will be going next week, and by Labor Day there’ll be scarcely any one left.”

“And when do those two boys go? They have a motor-boat, haven’t they?”

“Yes, a small one. I don’t know how long they will stay. As long as they can keep warm, they said. There is no chimney in that place.”

“Why couldn’t they move over to the big house?”

“Maybe they will. You might suggest it,” answered Mabel slyly.

Miss Rindy gave a little contemptuous sniff and the subject was dropped.

Supplied with wraps and carrying various boxes and baskets, the girls set off for the wharf where they were met by the rest of the party. Reed and Tom were on hand, having met the Truesdell girls the day before, and were helping Alvin stow away the provisions.

“Don’t forget a jug of water,” Hettie called.

“And matches, has any one matches?” Gertrude asked.

For answer Tom dived down into his pocket and produced a box which he held up to view.

“We’d better have a can of milk, in case the cream gives out,” Hettie suggested. “Cassie, you run up to the store and get it. And see if they have any marshmallows,” she called after the child who sped off on her errand.

She was back quickly, bringing the can of milk. “No more marshmallows; all sold out, Mr. Hodges said, and they aren’t going to get any more.”

“Oh, well, it doesn’t matter. I thought it would be nice to toast some, but we can get along without.”

At last all were aboard, and they pushed off, rounded a point, and turned toward the upper reaches of the bay, the small trailer bobbing along in their wake. The skies were blue and the breezes just fresh enough to make the girls pull up the collars of their sweaters. Gulls were soaring and dipping, giving raucous screams when a fishing boat cast out undesired objects from the catch. Before five o’clock Goose Island was reached, and all scrambled ashore.

“There’s the fireplace,” cried Gertrude, plunging through the bushes to reach a point where, earlier in the season, a fireplace of stones had been built up. “Now you masculines go hunting for driftwood while we unpack the baskets.”

In a short time wood enough was gathered, the coffee was bubbling merrily, and the bacon sizzling in the pan. There were several dashes away from the fire to escape the puffs of smoke, and one pan of bacon was overturned, causing a mighty conflagration for the moment, but that was the only mishap. Hettie was chief cook, with Ellen as assistant, and the supper served did them credit.

“I don’t know why it is that everything always tastes so wonderfully good when we go on these picnics,” remarked Mabel, nibbling a sandwich; “and I eat twice as much as upon any other occasion.”

“So say we all of us,” Reed chimed in.

“In spite of what you say,” said Hettie, “we always bring too much. Just look at all this stuff. Shall we feed it to the fishes or lug it back?”

“My frugal mind would suggest that it would be a wicked waste to throw it away,” said Ellen. “‘What they could not eat that day they had the next day fried,’ remember.”

“All right,” returned Hettie, “we’ll obey your frugal mind’s suggestion and pack it away. Nobody can tell what the morrow may bring forth. You’d better begin to stow away these things in the boat, boys, for we must start right back if we want to get home before night. It gets dark so soon these days.”

The tide was out by now, and great stretches of slippery seaweed lay between the shore and the boat, but, by dint of using the board seats as a bridge, all were helped safely aboard, and the return trip began. The sun had set in a glow of amber light, and all seemed fair for the voyage.

“Let her go, Alvin,” cried Reed as he pushed off and then made a flying leap to land in the boat. He scrambled over to a place by Ellen. “I don’t like the look of that gray bank along the east,” he said in a low tone to her, “but I reckon we can make it. Whoop her up, boy,” he called to Alvin.

“Oh, do you think it means we shall have a storm?” quavered the Truesdells’ cousin, Mrs. Olmstead, who had heard what Reed said.

“Not a storm, but fog. It may come up quickly, or it may hang around outside, but we know the channel pretty well, and there’s no danger. I’ve cruised around in these waters so much this summer that I could steer in the dark. I’ve learned a lot from the fishermen, too.”

They chugged along steadily for some time, then suddenly the boat stopped short, gave a few futile wheezes, went on a little distance, and then came to a dead standstill, or as much of a one as a boat afloat could do.

“Hello! What’s wrong?” cried Tom and Reed in unison, as they climbed over to where Alvin was striving in vain to right matters.

“Let’s look at her,” said Tom, gazing down into the depths where the engine was. He and Alvin consulted, experimented, did their best, but the boat still lopped helplessly around, drifting with the outgoing tide. “I’m blest if I know what’s wrong,” said Tom, lifting his head at last. “Nothing seems to be out of order so far as I can see.”

“It looks all right to me,” Alvin agreed.

“I don’t suppose by any chance it needs some juice,” remarked Reed.

“I never thought of that,” replied Alvin, grinning sheepishly. “I gave the can to Sam Denny and told him to fill her up, so it must be stowed away somewhere.” He began to search.

“It’s horrid, this lopping around,” complained little Mrs. Olmstead. “Do help to look for the can, Bert,” she said to her brother.

He joined in the search, but it was to no avail, and at last Alvin stood up and shook his fist in the direction of the distant Beatty’s Island. “Doggone that Sam Denny!” he exclaimed. “He’s forgotten to put it in.”

“Do you mean we can’t go on?” cried Mrs. Olmstead in horrified tones.

No one answered. The young men looked at each other, then looked off across the water to discover the nearest land. “There’s nothing to do but to row for it,” said Reed to Alvin, “and the longer we wait the farther out we’ll drift.”

“Then we’d better waste no time over it,” returned Alvin, clambering over the seats and drawing up the little trailer alongside. He crawled in, Reed following, and they plied the oars vigorously, the larger boat in tow. It was a hard pull, but by degrees the distance to shore lessened, and at last they reached dry land.

“Have we got to spend the night here?” asked little Mrs. Olmstead with a hysterical sob.

“There might be worse places,” said Bert. “There are no wild beasts or poisonous snakes.”

“But it will soon be dark, and we’ve no place to sleep,” responded his sister tremulously.

“You wouldn’t mind going to a dance and staying up pretty near all night,” retorted Bert.

“Don’t fuss, children; don’t fuss,” urged Hettie. “We’ll manage somehow. What worries me the most is that Mother will be distracted. She’ll think something dreadful has happened, that we’re drowned, or gobbled up by sharks, or some little thing like that.”

“Cousin Rindy will be worried, too,” remarked Ellen. “I wish there were some way to let her know we are safe. If we could only broadcast the news, for instance.”

“Don’t worry; we’ll find some way out,” Reed assured her. “The first thing is to see if we can find some sort of shelter before it gets too dark to explore, and then we’ll decide what to do next. Come on, boys, let’s see what the jungle has to disclose.”

The three young men, with Bert, plunged into a thicket, and disappeared, leaving the girls huddled together on the rocks, Mrs. Olmstead shedding futile tears, the others discussing the situation and suggesting ways to meet it. Once in a while Gertrude, who had brought a flash-light, turned it in the direction whither the boys had gone. The island where they had landed was but a small one, and there were no signs of a habitation upon it, only a little stretch of sandy beach, rocks above it, and, beyond, a grove of fir trees with a few birches interspersed.

In a little while the crackle of twigs announced the return of the exploring party.

“There’s a little dilapidated log hut in there,” announced Alvin as he came crashing through the underbrush; “it isn’t much of a place, but it’s better than nothing, and will give us shelter. We’d better get to it before it’s any darker. I’ll lead the way.”

The girls followed him in single file. Only glimmers of light sifted down through the sombre firs, and it was necessary to be careful of the footing lest one stumble and come to grief. At last they reached the spot where Tom and Reed were busily gathering boughs to fling upon the floor of the cabin, which was a rough structure, one side open to the winds. There was no chimney, and through chinks between the logs one could peer out into the surrounding thicket.

“Now, you all make yourselves as comfortable as you can,” suggested Tom, “while we fellows go back for the baskets and things.”

“Gee! I’m glad you didn’t throw away all that provender,” exclaimed Bert. “We’ll be as hungry as the dickens before morning.”

“Oh, Bert!” wailed his sister again, lapsing into tears.

Reed tossed his overcoat to Ellen. “Keep that,” he said; “I’ll not need it yet a while.”

“Bert, you’d better stay here and keep off the bears,” charged Alvin. “We are going after the baskets.” Then with Tom and Reed he went off.

Mabel snuggled up close to Ellen. “If we wanted adventure we surely have it,” she whispered. “It’s getting sort of shivery. I’m glad we brought warm wraps, although they seemed superfluous when we started out, didn’t they?”

“And we would have left them at home if Cousin Rindy hadn’t insisted that we would need them. She certainly is a wise old dear. No doubt she will sit up all night watching for us. I don’t mind anything so much as having her do that.”

“What I want to know is how we are to get off this island even in daylight.”

“I’m trusting to the boys to find a way, and I’m sure they’ll do it.”

They were not long left in doubt, for soon the forms of Alvin and Tom were seen approaching in the gathering darkness.

“Three of you went forth. Where is the third?” inquired Mabel. “Have you thrown him to the sea-god to propitiate him?”

Tom set down the basket he carried, but did not answer for a moment; then he burst out with, “That Reed Marshall is the darndest fellow!”

“What’s he done now?” came in a chorus.

“He’s taken the rowboat and is on his way back to Beatty’s. While we were gathering up the baskets and things he slyly cut loose and made off before we could stop him. I shouted to him to come back, but he said we must stand by; that he’d take word to Mrs. Truesdell and Miss Crump, tell them you all were safe, and that he’d be back with help as early in the morning as possible.”

“But is it safe for him to go so far, and at night?” asked Ellen tremulously.

“It’s a pretty long pull, but he has the grit to make it. He’s strong and has some top piece. He’ll put it across if any one can, but I did hate to see him go off alone; it didn’t seem fair.”

“Why didn’t you go with him, Alvin?” Hettie spoke up sharply.

“Mr. Clayton has just told you that he was off before we knew it, and when we tried to argue with him he said it wasn’t worth while for more than one to take the risk.”

Ellen gave a quick gasp and clutched Mabel, who gave her hand an answering pressure. Mrs. Olmstead, as usual, had recourse to tears. “Alvin, you’re an idiot,” said Hettie crossly.

“Reed’ll make it; I should worry,” insisted Tom. “Now all of you try to get a little sleep, if you can. Alvin and I will keep watch.”

It was little sleep any one had that night, resting on the strewn branches and beds of dry leaves. It grew very cold before morning, so that Ellen realized why Reed had given her his coat. She drew a long quivering sigh and offered up a silent prayer for his safety. It was a relief when dawn came. One by one crept out of the cabin, and stole down to the rocks to gaze over the rose-flecked water and catch the first glimpse of an approaching boat.

At last a small, dark speck appeared. It came nearer and nearer, steadily heading toward them. “Ahoy there!” cried Tom on the outmost edge of rock. “Ahoy!” came back the answer. A few minutes later the boat was near enough for them to recognize its occupants, but Reed was not one of them.

CHAPTER XIX

AN INHERITANCE

Every one crowded around as the boat drew up and two men jumped out. “Are you from Beatty’s Island?” inquired more than one.

“Right you are,” was the reply. “Young man came in along about three o’clock, been rowing pretty near all night, he said; was nigh all in, got off his course, kinder foggy for a time, but he got back again. Beats me how he done it, not being used to these waters, but he said he knew which way the wind blew,—lots of sense he had,—and steered according. I take off my hat to a landsman that could make his way in the dark like that. Of course any of us men could do it, being as much at home on these waters as ashore.”

“But where is he? Where is he?” Ellen interrupted eagerly.

The man chuckled. “Lady by name o’ Crump’s got him in tow, stowed him away in bed, sot a big nigger to watch that he didn’t get away, come down herself and routed us up, told us a party was marooned off here and we’d got to come after ’em, which we was willing to do. We was going out to draw out lowbster pots anyway. What’s wrong? Engine gone dead on you?”

“Juice gave out,” replied Alvin shortly.

“Ah-h, I see; that does happen in the best regerlated families, sometimes, specially when you hev a load of pretty wimmin folks along,” said the man with a sly wink at Tom.

“Wal, if juice is all you want, we can load you up and go about our business,” said the second man. “No, glad to accommodate you.” He shook his head as Alvin tendered more than the price of the gasoline. “So long.”

The gasoline provided, the men went off to their lobster pots, and the marooned party consumed the remnants of yesterday’s feast before they set out for home, Tom having built a fire and made coffee earlier.

“For shipwrecked mariners cast away on a desert island I think we are faring pretty well,” remarked Hettie. “Who was the foresighted person who thought to provide extra coffee?”

“Ellen, of course,” answered Mabel. “She always thinks of the useful things; Useful Ellen we call her.”

“Don’t give me the credit,” Ellen protested. “It is all Cousin Rindy’s training.”

“But there had to be something to build on,” Mabel asserted.

The last of the provisions disappeared before they started off, Bert in no wise unwilling to despatch large slices of cake at that hour of the morning. So, cheered and sustained, they made a quiet journey without any regrets because of the adventure, now that it was over. Mrs. Olmstead was the only grumbler, but nobody listened to her, and they arrived at their wharf quite cheerful.

To their surprise it was Reed who was first to greet them. “Why, we thought you were in bed under strict guard,” said Ellen as he helped her ashore; “behind locked doors we understood.”

“So I was, but fortunately there were windows from which I escaped. Miss Rindy believes I am still peacefully sleeping.”

“You should have had a good rest after that terrible trip.”

“It wasn’t terrible, rather exciting, and I was pretty well tuckered out when I reached here, but I’ve had a good sleep and am ‘pert as a lizard.’ But, tell me, how did you get along?”

“Very well indeed. That good Tom Clayton just laid himself out to do everything in his power to make us comfortable.”

“I told you he was a mighty good sort. As soon as you’re rested, Cronette, and have had your breakfast I have something to tell you.” He looked at her gravely.

“I’m not a bit tired and I’ve had breakfast, thank you. Tell me now.”

“No, I don’t want to hurry over it. We must have a quiet place and a quiet hour.”

“You look so serious; I hope it isn’t bad news.”

“It is in one way, but not in another.”

“You rouse my curiosity to the highest pitch. Let’s hurry.”

Miss Rindy was as astonished to see Reed as she was glad to see Ellen. “I’d like to know where you came from!” she exclaimed as the two entered. “I told you not to get up till noon, and I told Beulah to lock that door.”

“You forgot there are windows, a porch roof, and posts, dear madam.”

“Don’t you madam me; I’m a spinster, you sly, crafty youth. Well, Ellen, you did get back safe, thanks to this boy. I hope you’re none the worse for your outing.”

“Not a bit. I hope you are none the worse for your vigil.”

“As if I wasn’t used to sitting up all night. I did it times without number over there in France, and often enough before that.” She was not going to let Ellen think that she had been anxious about her.

Here Mabel, accompanied by Tom, entered. “I feel as if I had been away a year,” exclaimed the girl. “I hope I find you well, Miss Crump.”

“As well as anybody could feel after all this hulla-baloo. Getting me up at the dead hours of the night with a crazy tale of castaways.”

“Oh, but you were up already, Miss Rindy,” declared Reed.

“Well, I hadn’t gone to bed, that’s true. I must have fallen asleep in my chair, and didn’t realize the time.” She gave a little laugh, which belied her words, and then turned the subject by saying that they must have some breakfast; and, in spite of the fact that all insisted that they needed none, she set aside their assertions, claiming that she and Reed wanted some if nobody else did, so all sat down together, and, with new appetites, whetted by their morning trip on the water, did justice to Beulah’s waffles.

An hour later Reed and Ellen sought a sheltered corner under the shadow of a great rock. Just as they were leaving the house Mabel ran after them, waving a letter. “Miss Rindy says she forgot to give you this; it came in the mail after we left yesterday.”

Ellen took the letter, glanced at the typewritten address, and slipped it into the pocket of the coat she wore. Then, with Reed, she seated herself. “Now tell me your news,” she said.

Reed was silent for a moment, then he drew from his pocket a letter which he spread out upon his knee. “This is from Uncle Pete’s lawyer,” he said.

“Don Pedro’s lawyer? What’s he writing to you about? Have you been doing anything reprehensible?” Ellen asked flippantly.

“No. One doesn’t always receive letters from lawyers because of misdemeanors; there are such things as wills, you know.”

Ellen stared at him for a moment in speechless silence; then, as a possible meaning of his words reached her, she gasped, “You don’t mean—you can’t mean that dear Don Pedro is—is——”

Reed nodded. “He was taken ill in the mountains where he was spending the summer, and lived but a few days.”

Ellen covered her face with her hands, then raised wet eyes to Reed’s grave face. “Your letter, what does it say?”

“It tells me that to his godson and namesake he has left the contents of his studio, including all his pictures except such as are bequeathed to some one mentioned in another clause of the will. He also leaves me ten thousand dollars.”

“But you said his namesake,” returned Ellen, looking puzzled.

“My legal name is Peter Reed Marshall. Uncle Pete didn’t like the name of Peter, so I dropped it and always have been called Reed.”

“Dear Don Pedro,” murmured Ellen with a faraway look. “How we shall miss him! It was fine for him to remember you in that way. I am glad he did.”

“It was just like him to do it. He has always encouraged me to go on with my studies, even when it was hard sledding and it looked as if I couldn’t make my way. He always came to my rescue, and told me not to sell my soul for Mammon.”

Again Ellen looked puzzled. “But I thought you were very well off. I never dreamed that you had any sort of struggle.”

“What made you think so?”

“Why, the violin. You paid a good price for it, you know, and how could you, if money wasn’t easy to get?”

Reed flushed up. “You’ve caught me, Cronette. I paid for it with the check Uncle Pete gave me for Christmas, and he made up the rest. He wanted me to have it if you couldn’t keep it, said it should not go to a stranger. He knew how I longed for it.”

“Dear, dear Don Pedro,” again sighed Ellen.

“You wanted me to have it, didn’t you, Cronette?”

“Oh, I did, you know I did, and now, since I know you so well, I am more than ever glad.”

“It brought us together, and so I value it more than ever,” said Reed softly. “Cronette, I think you’d better look at your letter. From the look of the envelope I believe it is from that same lawyer.”

Ellen hurriedly drew forth the letter, opened it, read it hastily, then, after handing it to Reed, buried her face in her hands.

“Don’t cry, dear,” she heard Reed say in a few minutes; and he drew her hands away from her face, gently enfolding them in his.

“But—but,” quavered Ellen, “I can’t help it. It was so lovely of him to think of me in that way, to leave me the pictures my father painted and that he bought at the sale when Mother had to part with everything. And to leave me five thousand dollars, too. I can’t help being overcome.”

“No, of course you can’t. The lawyer says there is a letter of instructions, and that he will forward me a copy of the part that concerns me. Perhaps you will get one, too. I know Uncle Pete often spoke of having an exhibition of his pictures and your father’s, a joint affair. We must follow out his wishes, Cronette.”

Ellen agreed with him, and they sat a long time talking over this unlooked-for situation. Little curling waves rippled in at their feet, “nosing around among the rocks like a dog,” said Reed. He looked off over the blue expanse to the hazy horizon line. “And over there is Spain,” he said musingly. “I want to go there some day, don’t you?”

“There are many, many places I should like to go, but I shall never leave Cousin Rindy while she needs me; if she could go, too, that would be another thing.”

Reed made no answer, but continued to look off across the sea. Meanwhile Miss Rindy and Mabel, all unaware of the subject which so engrossed the two outside, were talking of Ellen.

“I wish you would encourage Ellen to spend the winter with me,” Mabel began. “She has so much talent and could study at the Peabody, go to the concerts, and all that. She should have a musical career, don’t you think?”

Miss Rindy answered after a pause. “I’m not sure that it would be the wise thing. What would your grandmother think of it, of Ellen making a convenience of her house?”

“Oh, I don’t think Gran would mind. I must admit that she is something of a snob, a thing I despise, and that while she is generous in giving where it doesn’t mean a sacrifice on her part, she doesn’t care to give of herself.”

“And giving of one’s self is the only real unselfishness,” Miss Rindy interrupted. “If Ellen couldn’t make as good an appearance as your other friends, and couldn’t return her obligations, I would rather she did not go, certainly not for a whole winter. She has talent, maybe, but she isn’t a great genius, and only that could compensate.”

“But she is such a dear,” returned Mabel wistfully. “No one could help loving her, for she has what is known as charm.”

“She has her faults, but then no one is perfect, and I don’t expect her to be. There is one thing I may say, and that is, she is the only person in the world to whom I come first. I never did come first to any one till Ellen entered my life. I never was much considered in my own home, therefore you can understand that Ellen, her happiness, her future, mean a lot to me.”

“I do understand,” returned Mabel feelingly, for she thought Miss Rindy’s statements very pathetic; “and I can say one thing, and that is, she never for one moment forgets what you have done for her.”

“Gratitude is such a rare thing, especially in one as young as Ellen, that the fact makes me the more anxious to safeguard her.”

“But you do want her to follow a musical career, don’t you?”

“So far as it may be necessary for her happiness. I don’t want her to expect great things and then fail in the accomplishment, to risk all and fail. She’d better be a big frog in a little puddle than try to be a bigger frog in a puddle where she’d be crowded out. In other words, she will always be able to make a living in Marshville, while she might starve in the city.”

“Oh, but Marshville!”

“It isn’t a bad place to live, but if straws show which way the wind blows she won’t always live there.”

“Do you mean?”

“I mean what I mean. Time will show. From all indications I should say she will live there for some years yet.”

“And I hope all her summers, yours, too, and mine, can be spent up here. You will come next year, won’t you, Miss Rindy? Don’t you like it, and haven’t we had a happy, free time?”

Miss Rindy gave her attention to counting stitches on the knitting she had in hand, then she answered: “You have given us a wonderful time, my dear, but in my experience it isn’t best to expect to repeat one’s good times. Things are seldom twice the same. Something is sure to happen that will alter conditions. In this world the only thing you can count on is change.”

“Well, one thing can be counted upon, and that is my desire to repeat this summer’s experiences.”

“That may be your desire at this moment, but it may not be six months hence. We all may be a thousand miles apart by next year; one can never tell. That vocation you are so fond of talking about may take you to China or—somewhere else,” she added with a chuckle.

Before Mabel could expostulate Ellen came in. She went directly to her cousin, and, opening her letter, laid it before her. “Read that,” she said.

Miss Rindy hastily glanced over it “Why, Ellen! Why, Ellen!” she exclaimed. “What a surprise! I am sorry that dear good man is gone, but I can’t help being glad for you.”

“Mayn’t I come in on the surprise?” asked Mabel eagerly.

“What did I say about changes?” Miss Rindy returned, as she handed over the letter which Mabel read immediately.

“Of course it isn’t a fortune,” she commented, “but if those pictures sell well, it will swell the sum. I must spread the news abroad and get all my friends interested. I’ll buy one myself, and make Gran do the same, so you can count on two purchasers, at least.”

“Where is Reed?” asked Miss Rindy. “Does he know about this?”

“He does indeed, for he is mentioned in the will, too.” Then she told of what had been left to Reed. “He has gone to hunt up Tom,” she informed them.

“So probably we have seen the last of them this day,” remarked Miss Rindy with one of her twisted smiles. “I declare when I think of that boy rowing nearly all night out in that fog, I don’t know what to say.”

“I say he is a he-man,” responded Mabel. “I thought Tom was about the nicest ever, but now I may change my mind.”

“Take care,” Miss Rindy spoke warningly.

“Of what or whom?” inquired Mabel.

“You should know without me saying,” replied Miss Rindy.

“Well,” both girls flushed up, “I want to see him to congratulate him,” said Mabel. “Isn’t he coming back, Ellen?”

“This afternoon, but please don’t congratulate him. We have both lost a dear friend, and just now we can think only of that.”

“Of course, dear, I should have remembered.” Mabel spoke regretfully, and went over to put her arm around Ellen. Both girls had gained in weight and color. A row of tiny freckles had appeared on the bridge of Ellen’s nose, but her cheeks were rosy and her eyes bright, while Mabel was tanned and had lost a listless air which had been hers on her arrival.

Miss Rindy, looking at them, remarked upon their exuberant health. “This place surely doesn’t owe us anything,” she remarked. “I never saw such improvement in two beings, and as for myself I feel like a four-year-old. As for Beulah, she’s grown so fat she can scarcely waddle, and such an appetite! I don’t see how we can afford to feed her when we get back.”

“Oh, yes, we can, now,” Ellen assured her. “No doubt she will lose her appetite when she gets away from this stimulating air.”

“Only another week of it,” sighed Mabel. “The Palmers have gone, the Truesdells are beginning to pack up, and pretty soon all the lights alongshore will be out. Aunt Zenobia Simpson says she hates to see the last one go, but a lot of the natives are glad when they can have their island to themselves, and I don’t blame them. I suppose Reed and Tom are over at H. H.,” which was the way they spoke of the haunted house among themselves.

“Yes, Reed said there was a lot to do there. They want us to go over for a parting supper there to-morrow.”

“It is a dear place,” Mabel spoke reminiscently. “I’d like nothing better than to come up here every summer with you two and be sure that those boys would be over there. We have had such good times together. Oh, why can’t good times last forever?”

“They would cease to be good times after a while, and become only monotonous ones,” observed Miss Rindy sagely.

The next day brought them to their final visit to the little studio across the bridge, where a greater feast than usual was spread. The young artists gave each guest one of their sketches as a parting souvenir, Reed played a farewell rhapsody, and they went slowly home, lingering to watch a young moon, escorted by the evening star, dip down behind the line of peaked firs.

The sea was a little rough and boomed upon the rocks, a big wave once in a while hissing in, breaking thunderously, and then subsiding into a line of foam which was beginning to form creamy balls of spindrift.

As they stepped upon the porch a dark form arose from the steps. It was Beulah, who had been watching the surf. “Dat wahtah sutt’nly do bus’ up pretty,” was her remark as she followed the party into the house.

CHAPTER XX

FIDDLE AND I

The beautiful summer was over, and those in the cottage, which they had named “Spindrift,” must bid farewell to the rocks and waves, to the blueberry bushes and the sombre woods. The song sparrows had flown and the wild ducks had come. Cap’n Belah’s apples were gathered in, and the door of his house, which had stood wide open all summer, was now closed against the searching winds.

The little steamboat was now making but one trip a day. The young man who all summer had run a jitney, now had departed for larger fields, so those who wished to reach the wharf must “foot it,” as Cap’n Belah said. The sun had not been up very long when the party from “Spindrift” cottage started down the road, Reed and Tom carrying bags and suit-cases, and Beulah lumbering along in the rear, weighted down with bundles. As most of the summer visitors had left, there were but few to wave farewell as the little boat steamed off.

“But we’ll all come back next summer, won’t we?” said Mabel brightly as they turned a point which hid the island from view.

“I shall if I have to swim,” responded Tom.

“And I, too, if I have to walk,” Reed avowed.

“And I, if I have to hire an aëroplane,” Ellen said laughing.

“We can count on you, can’t we, Miss Rindy?” Mabel asked.

“I make no rash promises,” was the answer. “Who knows where we all may be another summer?”

This somewhat subdued the exuberance and confidence of the young people, and they began to chatter and make plans for the day which they would spend in Portland before taking the night train. The two young men had arranged to go as far as New York with their friends, and Mabel had decided to spend a few days there with her aunt. She tried to dissuade Ellen from going on to Marshville with her cousin. “I don’t see why both of you can’t stop off for a little while,” she urged.

“And what would we do with Beulah?”

“Make a bale of her and send her by freight,” suggested Reed; “ship her as dry-goods, or, better still, as foodstuff, marked perishable.”

“Food-stuffed, you’d better say,” remarked Ellen, looking over toward the corner where Beulah, having partaken of an insufficient breakfast, was munching such left-overs as she had been able to stow away in a capacious pocket.

Even Miss Rindy laughed, but agreed with Ellen that the problem of how to dispose of Beulah in New York would be too intricate to be considered. “If she adds much more to her weight, they will be charging us double fare,” she remarked. “I think she must have gained twenty pounds.”

So on they went to Marshville, Ellen expecting to join Mabel in New York when the joint exhibition of pictures should take place. Reed was to look after this, and Ellen knew he could be depended upon.

Therefore the next day saw them back at home, and soon everything was going on as before, and the summer was remembered as a lovely dream.

Caro was the first to give them greeting. She came first thing in the morning to give and receive news. Sally Cooper was engaged to a man from Meadowville, but wasn’t going to be married for a year, as her family thought she was too young. Clyde Fawcett was going with a girl from the city; she was a niece of Mrs. Craig Hale, and had been visiting Marshville. Frank Ives was just getting over typhoid fever, had been ill all summer, as Ellen knew from Caro’s letters. Then Ellen told of her good times, but not a word did she say of her windfall; that could wait, or not be told at all. So they talked till Jeremy Todd came in and Caro left. To Jeremy Ellen unburdened her heart, and learned from him that he, too, had been remembered in the will of his old friend Peter Barstow, and that an annuity of five hundred dollars was to be his. After his death this was to be continued, under certain conditions, paid to the person or persons named in a private letter left with the testator’s lawyer.

“I can imagine that dear Don Pedro rather enjoyed creating a little mystery,” remarked Ellen. “I am so glad, dear Music Master, that this has come to you.”

“I am pleased, too,” asserted Mr. Todd. “Strange that it should win one more respect from some quarters.”

Ellen wondered if he referred to his wife, and hoped he did. Anything which increased her respect for her husband was not to be regretted.

Frank Ives, still very wan and pale, lost no time in coming to call. His illness, which took him very near to the dark valley, had subdued him and had taken away a certain over-confidence, so that Ellen liked him better. There never had been anything snobbish about Frank, but he had been a little too self-satisfied. If Ellen was kinder than before, it was that her sympathies were aroused, and she made promises to ride and walk with the lad, promises which sent him away in a happy mood.

Thus the autumn passed. Reed wrote often, reporting progress of his affairs. Mr. Barstow’s studio was his until the lease was up in the spring. Tom Clayton was sharing it with him. They were going over the pictures and hoped to have the exhibition and sale some time in December.

Mabel wrote sometimes from New York, sometimes from Baltimore. She said less about her vocation and more about improving her mind. Ellen wondered when she would settle down to anything stable. “She will be steadfast enough once she really makes up her mind what she wants to do,” Ellen said to Miss Rindy.

“The trouble is that she has no set duty,” Miss Rindy answered. “She is the sort of girl who should marry and have something to tie to. I wish she would. Does she ever mention Tom Clayton? He is the man for her.”

“She mentions him once in a while, calls him a dear old thing. I sometimes wonder if she would mention him more, or less, if she were really interested in him.”

“It’s just like a woman to take that sly way of covering her tracks and keep you guessing,” Miss Rindy asserted.

But Mabel did not keep them guessing very long, for before the first of the year Ellen received a letter which said: “Rejoice with me! I have found my vocation and its name is David Harland. Are you surprised, dear? I can assure you that I am. How such a wise, steady, unworldly being could be attracted to a girl brought up in such an atmosphere as I have been is a mystery to me. David is professor of botany and is going to South America next year, it being his Sabbatical year. He is some years older than I am, but we are very congenial, and I am as happy as the day is long. We shall be married just before we sail in June. Of course Gran thinks I am a first-class idiot because I did not choose a social star, but she is somewhat compensated by the fact that she will bring out my frivolous little cousin next winter, and will have the joy of directing her costumes and witnessing her conquests. Tell Miss Rindy she is the daughter of a prophet. How could she have foreseen that I was to fly so far away?”

Then followed loving messages, and promises to write more fully another time. Ellen folded the letter with a sigh. “Poor Tom,” she said.

“Are you sure it is ‘poor Tom’?” asked Miss Rindy.

“I surmise so, but one can’t be sure. He certainly was devoted last summer, and I know Mabel liked him.”

“But not well enough to marry him. Well, she certainly has given us a big surprise. Has she ever mentioned this man to you?”

“Once or twice very casually. I imagine she was quite bowled over early in the game, but was not sure how he felt, and so didn’t want to reveal her interest in him. I’m crazy to see him, aren’t you?”

“I’d like to, yes. I hope he is the right man for her.”

Ellen sighed again. “This puts an end to all our plans for next summer,” she said.

“I warned you, my child, not to count on anything but changes.”

But what changes were in store for them no one could foresee, especially Orinda Crump, who prophesied them. Ellen found her one day, just before Christmas, sitting with her hands in her lap, looking aimlessly out of the window.

“There wasn’t any mail, Cousin Rindy,” Ellen announced. “I looked in our box on my way home from practising.”

“I brought it home,” Miss Rindy told her, “and I wish I had lost it, or that the mail bag had burned up before it reached here or anything that would have spared me from getting that letter.” She pointed tragically to one which she had flung from her.

“Is it bad news?” asked Ellen anxiously.

“I don’t know whether it is bad or good; some might call it good news, I suppose, but I’m not going; I’m not, so there.”

“Going where?” Ellen looked bewildered. “Do tell me what has happened.”

“You may as well know first as last. I have had a letter from my brother. His wife is dead, leaving a daughter about twelve years old, and Al asks me to go out and take charge of things, says he is in poor health, has enough means to assure me a comfortable home, sentimentalizes over our childhood days—a happy childhood I had, didn’t I? After all these years pretends he has just awakened to the fact that he might have been a less indifferent brother. Now when he needs me he begins to see the light; just like him.”

“But you aren’t going, are you?” Ellen knelt down and took one of her cousin’s hands, fondling it as she spoke.

“Oh, Ellen, I don’t know. I said I wouldn’t, but perhaps it’s my duty, and I don’t believe I ever was one to shirk. It’s a hard question to decide, a hard question.”

“Oh, Cousin Rindy, please don’t go. Just as things are getting easier for us it would be too bad. What with my little windfall and what will be realized from the sale of my father’s pictures we shall not have to pinch and screw as we have done. I have been rejoicing that I could do something toward lifting your burdens, and now——”

“Nonsense! as if you hadn’t lifted my burdens times without number. I’m not one to palaver, as you know, but I tell you, Ellen, that you have been the greatest comfort to me. Of course we’ve had our spats; and I’ve been as much to blame in them as you, but take it by and large I don’t believe two persons could live together more harmoniously than we have done. How do I know what that child of Al’s is like? Spoiled, probably, and hard to manage. With you I’ve had it all my own way, with no one to interfere if I wanted to shake you or box your ears.”

“Oh, Cousin Rindy, you never did such things,” Ellen expostulated.

“Did I say I had? I only said I might have wanted to, which no doubt I did sometimes. I repeat, there was no one to interfere, and in Al’s home I should have to answer to him. Well, I’ll have to think it over. It isn’t to be decided ‘hot off the bat,’ as my boys used to say.”

“But what would become of me if you deserted me?” asked Ellen dolorously.

“There, Ellen, that’s just it. It’s been a question with me for some time whether or not I was doing right to keep you here. You love that artist life; you have good friends in the city. What do you say to trying it out for a year while I try it out in Seattle? Then, if we make up our minds that we don’t like it, we can come back here and settle down for good and all. We’ll think it over before I say yea or nay to this proposition.”

So the matter was left for the present, and Ellen went about her affairs as usual. The tears would fill her eyes as she thought of putting the continent between herself and her cousin, yet when the picture of city life arose before her it held its charm.

Reed wrote from time to time. Just now he was absorbed in the exhibition which was taking place at one of the galleries. A creditable number of pictures had been sold; others would be auctioned off at the close, and certain ones, if not sold, would be withdrawn, and offered later. Ellen watched eagerly for the reports, valuing the appreciation shown as much as the material returns.

A week passed in which Albert Crump’s proposition was discussed daily from all points of view. Miss Rindy hesitated because she did not want Ellen to go to the city alone. “I don’t see why you couldn’t go with me,” she suggested at one time.

“Oh, but what would I do when I got there?” said Ellen.

“You could be a companion for Teresa.”

Ellen laughed. “She is twelve and I am nearly nineteen; I’m afraid we wouldn’t have much in common, especially if she is spoiled. I don’t believe you have spoiled me, Cousin Rindy.”

“I hope not, and I don’t mean to spoil her.”

“Mabel says that she and I are very unmodern and behind the times, but I don’t think I am of the clinging-vine order, and I believe I could be as independent as the next if I were thrown on my own resources.”

“Perhaps you could be; all the same I don’t like to think of you in the city alone. If you could go to the Austins, or if that nice Mr. Barstow were still living and could watch over you, I wouldn’t so much mind.”

“If that dear man were living, probably I wouldn’t have the means to go, unless I found some sort of position. Don’t worry about me, Cousin Rindy, if that’s all that keeps you from accepting.”

“To be sure it would be a great experience and give me a chance to see that part of the country, and I don’t have to stay, even if Albert does pay my fare, for I shall not promise to remain there for more than a year. After that we shall see what happens.”

So at last the matter was settled, the proposition was accepted, and Miss Rindy was to be gone a year. The Dove-Hales had some friends who were eager to rent Miss Crump’s house, furnished, and there was much to be done before the first of February, when the occupants decided to leave.

Caro dissolved in tears when she heard the news. Jeremy heaved a sigh and shook his head. “My little song bird is leaving her nest. I fear she will not come back to it,” he said.

Then one day appeared Reed. “I just had to come,” he said as Ellen greeted him at the door. “It’s all over but the shouting, and I knew you would want to know. Besides,” he added after a short pause, “I just had to see you; couldn’t stand it any longer. Why, it’s been nearly three months, Cronette, and my patience is stretched to the breaking point. Glad to see me?”

“Indeed I am,” Ellen assured him. “Well, how did it go?”

“Better than I expected. We sold more than half for fair prices. Those at the auction didn’t bring what we could wish, but we still have a number in reserve which I shall place from time to time at some of the big galleries, so eventually we shall realize a pretty decent sum. Are you satisfied, my dear co-heir?”

“Perfectly. I think you have managed excellently.”

“They say artists don’t usually have much business sense, but I really believe I shall develop some. I don’t know how it would be if I had to handle my own wares, probably I might fall down on such transactions, but given the proper incentive I believe I could put it over.” He beamed down upon her, and she gave him smile for smile, aware that it was good to see his tall figure, to look into his clear, honest eyes, and was surprised when a sudden desire to stroke his hair came over her. It was queer that she felt so, and suddenly her eyes fell before his steady gaze.

She moved her chair a little farther away from his, and for a short space silence fell between them. Then Reed roused himself to say, “What’s your news, Cronette? I’ve told you mine.”

Ellen wavered a moment before she determined to tell him. “Cousin Rindy is going out to Seattle for a year, maybe longer, to be with her brother. It has just been settled.”

“Great Scott! You don’t say so? And what’s to become of you? Don’t tell me you are going, too.”

“No, I am not. Mabel wanted me to spend the winter with her, but she is so absorbed in getting ready to be married,—I wrote you of that, you know,—that I don’t think I would feel as if I fitted into the scheme of things. I’d be like a little brown wren in a cage of birds of paradise.”

“Humph! not much you would. Of course I remember what you said about Miss Wickham’s engagement, and, if I didn’t, old Tom wouldn’t let me forget.”

“Oh, Reed——”

“Cronine, please.”

“Cronine, then. Do you think Tom is very hard hit?”

“I think he was at first, but he is now in the convalescent stage, is contemplating a mental change of scene, is shunting the picture of Miss Mabel off the stage, and is substituting another.”

“Who is it?”

“It was a gaudy blonde when I left; I don’t know who it will be when I get back.”

Ellen laughed. “He must be rather a fickle individual.”

“He might be called so in his present development, but I think he’d stick, given the proper lure. I’m built on different lines; when I fall I fall hard and stay right there forever and aye. There’s one thing, Cronette, that I’ve been saving to tell you, and that is I have bought the haunted house; got it for next to nothing, the owners were that glad to get rid of it.”

“Oh, R—Cronine, you have really bought it?”

“Certain sure, the whole outfit,—studio, trees, garden, all the whole thing, and I’m going to change the name of ‘haunted house.’”

“To what?”

“That depends upon you.”

“Upon me?”

Reed nodded. “I remember last summer that you said you would never leave your cousin while she needed you. She will stop needing you if she goes to her brother, and so what it’s been as hard as the mischief to keep from saying I’m going to say. Don’t you think it would be nice if we could always spend our summers up there on little Minor’s Island, you, and fiddle and I? Then I could change the name to Happy House. I don’t say that I hadn’t admired other girls before I saw you, but since that first evening at Uncle Pete’s I knew there never would be any other girl for me. I was bowled over then and there for keeps. Don’t you like me a right smart lot, Cronette? Bless that darling little name that is all ours, and that no one else uses. Cronette Marshall, how’s that for a name?”

“Oh, Reed, you are so ridiculous,” answered Ellen, half laughing, half crying.

He moved his chair closer and took her two hands. “Look me in the face,” he said, “and tell me truthfully whether or not I saw something in those lovely eyes of yours a while ago that makes me hope that you will agree to the name of Happy House. You and fiddle and I together, think of it, Cronette, and don’t you know it would please Uncle Pete?”

Ellen raised her eyes shyly, but what Reed saw there appeared to satisfy him. And then came a flurry of opening the front door, and a crisp call of “Ellen, come help me in with these things.”

Ellen dashed out; Reed followed. “I want to help, too,” he said.

Miss Rindy set down a netted bag full of her purchases. “Hello!” she said. “What are you doing here?”

“Just passing by and thought I’d drop in,” answered he.

“Don’t palm off that sort of talk on me,” replied Miss Rindy. “Come on in and give an account of yourself.”

“You won’t put me to bed, like that other time? It’s too cold to climb out windows.”

“I noticed you didn’t stay put long. Come in and give an account of yourself. Has Ellen told you our news?”

“Yes, and I’ve told her mine. Shall we tell her ours, Ellen?”

Ellen made no reply, but rushed out to the kitchen with the bag and bundles. When she came back the two were sitting on the sofa, Reed’s arm around Miss Rindy. She looked as if she had been crying, but at Ellen’s entrance she sat up very straight and tried to look stern.

“You needn’t think you’ve stolen a march on me, miss,” she said. “I’ve seen this coming for a long time.”

“Oh, have you?” exclaimed Ellen in astonishment.

“Yes, I have, but you are entirely too young, both of you, to think of getting married; you not nineteen and he only twenty-three. You must wait two or three years.”

“Three years!” Reed looked aghast. “No home, no friends, no Ellen. How can you, Miss Rindy?”

“Well, we’ll say two.”

“We’ll wait till you get back from Seattle,” interposed Ellen.

“Are you putting a premium on a long stay?” asked Miss Rindy with a swift smile. Then, very seriously: “You’ll take good care of her while I am away, won’t you, Reed? The fact that you will be at hand to watch over her makes me better satisfied to go.”

“You bet I’ll take care of her,” returned Reed fervently.

Thus was Miss Rindy’s prophecy fulfilled, for the summer saw far separated those who had roamed Beatty’s Island together.

But one day two years later, Ellen, standing at the door of Happy House, saw a group coming across the bridge. “Here they come! Here they come! They caught the morning boat!” she cried.

The strains of a violin suddenly ceased, and Reed’s long legs brought him to Ellen’s side before the travellers came up. Mabel and her husband pressed forward, next came Miss Rindy with her fatherless little niece, Teresa, and then—who but Jeremy Todd?

Ellen held out her hands. “Welcome to Happy House!” she cried.

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Table of Contents

AN EVERYDAY GIRL

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX