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Title: A successful venture

Author: Ellen Douglas Deland

Release Date: August 21, 2022 [EBook #68799]

Language: English

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This etext was transcribed by Les Bowler

A

SUCCESSFUL VENTURE

BY

ELLEN DOUGLAS DELAND

AUTHOR OF “MALVERN,” “OAKLEIGH,” ETC.

“Jog on, jog on the footpath way,

And merrily hent the stile-a.

A merry heart goes all the day,

Your sad tires in a mile-a.”

SHAKESPEARE

ILLUSTRATED BY

ALICE BARBER STEPHENS

BOSTON

W. A. WILDE & COMPANY

25 BROMFIELD STREET

COPYRIGHT, 1897,

BY W. A. WILDE & COMPANY.

All rights reserved.

A SUCCESSFUL VENTURE.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER

PAGE

I.

MRS. WENTWORTH WARD VISITS GLEN ARDEN

9

II.

THE STARRS HOLD A FAMILY COUNCIL

26

III.

A DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

44

IV.

KATHERINE AS A FINANCIER

61

V.

PETER SEEKS INFORMATION

81

VI.

PETER’S NEW ACQUAINTANCES

99

VII.

VICTORIA GOES IN SEARCH OF FUNDS

117

VIII.

UNEXPECTED GENEROSITY

134

IX.

SOPHY HAS AN ADVENTURE

153

X.

THE NEW NEIGHBORS ON THE HILL

171

XI.

VICTORIA DECIDES TO KEEP IT SECRET

188

XII.

ROGER MADISON TELLS A STORY

206

XIII.

PETER MEETS WITH A SERIOUS ACCIDENT

224

XIV.

SOPHY WAYLAYS ROGER MADISON

242

XV.

VICTORIA MEETS WITH DIFFICULTIES

261

XVI.

MIDNIGHT MARAUDERS

281

XVII.

ON THE RIVER

301

XVIII.

MRS. WENTWORTH WARD CHANGES HER OPINION

320

ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

“‘I always keep my engagements’”

F’piece

“The girls and Peter could see Katherine, who sat in the hall below”

79

“‘It is a gem’”

136

“There, beneath one of the old trees, she found a rustic bench”

188

“She found her eldest sister sitting on a rustic bench, under the trees, with her work in her hands”

269

CHAPTER I.

MRS. WENTWORTH WARD VISITS GLEN ARDEN.

IT was raining heavily, and a strong wind from the northeast blew the drops with relentless force against the dining-room windows. The few leaves that remained upon the trees were fast dropping, falling in sodden unloveliness upon the drenched lawn. It was a day for all those who could do so to remain within doors.

The four girls were in the dining-room. It was the most cheerful place in which to sit on a rainy day, and the fire that burned on the hearth lighted up the room, and gave it an aspect of cosiness that was very pleasant.

Honor Starr, the eldest of the family, was lying upon the sofa, which had been drawn forward from its usual corner and placed within reach of the warmth. She had a book in her hand, although she was not reading at the moment. She also held a bottle of camphor, which she applied frequently to her nose.

Sophy, the youngest sister, who was only eight years old, sat at a table near the side window, brandishing first a large pair of shears, and then a paint or a paste brush, while sheets of tissue paper, of every hue known to a maker of paper dolls, lay about her on the floor, and were mingled with the contents of an overflowing waste-basket which had just been upset.

Katherine, who was eighteen, and who came next in age to Honor, had been showing to her sisters a very handsome silver-backed handglass, which she had bought the day before in Boston, and apparently there had been some argument on the subject, for Katherine’s pretty face wore a perturbed expression, and she glanced somewhat resentfully at Honor, who was then devoting herself to the camphor bottle with conspicuous attention.

Victoria, the third sister, a girl of fifteen, knelt before the fire, to which she energetically applied the poker. Victoria was apt to use energy in the smallest affairs of life. The girls were all dressed in black, which perhaps added to the effect of dreariness caused by the weather.

“Surely, she won’t come to-day!” said Katherine, laying down the mirror and going to the window, whence a view of the drive was to be had. The house was set low, and was at some distance from the main road. The avenue leading to the house wound in and out among the trees, but there was one portion of it which was open, and could be seen easily from the windows. This open space Katherine was watching with scrupulous care.

“A dog wouldn’t put his nose out of doors to-day, if he could help it,” she continued.

“Aunt Sophia is no dog,” observed Victoria, coming behind her and peering over her shoulder; “she is a Woman, spelt with a capital W; therefore wind and weather will never keep her at home. I heard the whistle of the train, ages ago. And—yes, there she is!”

“Oh!” exclaimed the four sisters together, as a depot carriage came rapidly into sight and was then lost again among the trees.

“Sophy, do straighten up that table! Your chips are everywhere! And pick up the waste-basket!” cried Katherine, turning hastily from the window. “Why did you choose to-day of all others to make paper-doll dresses?”

“Why, Kathie, you know I always play paper dolls on Saturday, especially if it is a rainy one!” exclaimed Sophy, with reproachful emphasis; “and you told me yourself—”

“Children, don’t waste the time in useless arguments,” interrupted Victoria. “Aunt Sophia is here, and we ought to have been ready for her, for we might have known she would come. Honor, it will give her fifty fits on the spot if she finds you on the sofa reading a novel at this hour. Do get up and look brisk, even if you don’t feel so!”

Victoria was flying about the room, as she spoke, moving a chair here, and straightening a rug there, beating up a down pillow which still bore the indentation left by the last person who had leaned against it, and whisking out of the way the large box which was standing open upon the table.

“Here is your bargain of a silver handglass, Katherine. I advise you to keep that well out of Aunt Sophia’s sight,” she said; and then steps were heard upon the piazza, the front door was opened, and there came in at the same time and with equal force, Mrs. Wentworth Ward of Boston and a strong gust of wind from the northeast.

“Why, Aunt Sophia!” exclaimed Honor, rising slowly from her sofa, which was in full view of the hall. “Is it really you?”

“It is really I,” replied her aunt; “and who else should it be, or why should it not be I? How do you all do? Honor, what is the matter that you are lying down at this hour of the day? Victoria, take my waterproof to the kitchen to be dried, if you please. Katherine, your hand, while I take off my overshoes! Sophia, come here, child, and give me a kiss! You smell of flour paste and are very sticky. What have you been doing? There, now I am ready to sit down.”

She walked into the dining-room and placed herself in a large chair at a discreet distance from the fire. She was a tall woman—all the Starrs were tall—and of proportionate width. Her forehead was broad and high, and above it the gray hair was parted and brushed smoothly back on either side of her face. Her nose was rather large and was perfectly straight, her teeth were exceptionally good, and her complexion might have been called “high colored.” She was president, or vice-president, or at least director, of no one knows how many charitable, literary, and musical societies in Boston, and she was noted for her rare executive ability. Among the other things which she tried to manage were her nieces the Starrs, and she found them by no means the least difficult.

“You are brave to come to the country on such a day as this,” murmured Honor, sinking again upon the sofa, but not actually lying down. She was conscious that she was inviting censure both by speech and action.

“I always keep my engagements,” replied Mrs. Wentworth Ward. “If women did not keep their engagements, what would become of mankind? Ten days ago I wrote on my memorandum calendar for November third, ‘Glen Arden, 9 A.M. train.’ A woman should be as exact as a railroad time-table, whatever the weather. It is the only way to accomplish anything in this world. The 9 A.M. train has arrived, and so have I.”

She paused, but no one spoke. It was apparent that she intended to enforce a lesson, and she gave her nieces a moment in which to digest it. In the meantime Victoria returned from her expedition to the kitchen with her aunt’s waterproof, and as she entered the room she glanced hastily about.

Victoria, though only fifteen, was keenly sensitive, and it seemed to her that the intellectual atmosphere was surcharged with a high explosive, ready to go off with a loud report should a match be applied to it. She was quite sure that her aunt held the match and had come to Glen Arden this rainy day for the express purpose of striking it.

“And now to business,” said Mrs. Wentworth Ward—she preferred that the two names should be mentioned in conjunction. “As you may suppose, I had an especial purpose in coming out here to-day. I have come to the conclusion, and I think your guardian will fully agree with me, that you cannot live here any longer.”

Yes, it was just as Victoria had suspected. Aunt Sophia had struck her match, and an explosion had promptly followed.

“And why not, may I ask?” demanded Honor, sitting upright upon the sofa.

“How perfectly absurd!” exclaimed Katherine, with a vehemence that was scarcely respectful.

“Oh, Aunt Sophia, you are trying to frighten us!” remarked Victoria, assuming an air of gaiety that appeared forced.

“But we don’t want to live anywhere else,” added Sophy, as if that reason were conclusive. Sophy, being only eight, had not yet fully realized the aunt for whom she was named.

Mrs. Wentworth Ward looked from one to the other of her four nieces. She appeared to be quite unmoved by their excitement. There can be no surprise for the one who strikes the match on occasions of this kind, and Mrs. Wentworth Ward prided herself always upon being equal to an occasion.

“I felt so at the time that your father died,” she continued, “but I said nothing. There was no one who could come here then to live with you, and it was not convenient for me to ask you to live with me; but in the three months which have elapsed since then, I have reached a decision. It is my way, as you know, to think over my plans carefully before making them known to others. I have thought them over, and now I tell you. It is neither seemly nor proper—and there are other reasons, too, which make it impossible—that my nieces and nephew should continue to live here alone. By the way, where is Peter?”

Peter’s sisters did not seem inclined to reply, until Victoria, fearing lest the silence should exasperate her aunt, volunteered the information that he was down at the barn.

“He went an hour ago to attend to his rabbits,” she said. “I suppose he is there still.”

“Did he not know that I was coming?” asked her aunt. “Why rabbits when I am expected? But, after all, that is neither here nor there. You are all to come and live with me. In other words, my house shall be your home henceforth. Honor shall act as my secretary. Honor, you have the ability, and there is no reason why you should not turn it to account, instead of spending your time on a sofa. Indeed, I have not yet been told why you are on the sofa. Are you ill?”

“I have a cold. But, Aunt Sophia, suppose I don’t care to be your secretary?”

“I cannot suppose anything so impossible,” returned Mrs. Wentworth Ward, imperturbably; “for of course you will be only too glad to do something for me in return for the many advantages which life in town will give you. Katherine can perfect herself in music, at the same time taking charge of the bric-á-brac. That shall be her duty. I have decided it all.”

“So it appears,” observed Katherine. “I invariably break bric-á-brac when I handle it. I should advise you to make a different arrangement.”

“Victoria shall continue to go to school,” continued her aunt, ignoring this suggestion. “In fact, she and Sophy and Peter are to go to boarding-school. I have already written and made the necessary arrangements. They can spend their holidays with me on Beacon Street. I shall take you into society, when our period of mourning is over. Next winter you can begin to go out a little. In fact, you can go to concerts this winter, and to lectures. It will be quite proper. I intend that your minds shall be improved. Honor, what is that book which I see peeping from beneath your pillow?”

The awkward pause which followed was broken by Victoria, who hastened to divert her aunt’s mind.

“Poor Honor has such a cold,” said she. “I gave her some of your remedy, Aunt Sophia, and it has worked wonders. Did you tell us to take it every three or every four hours?”

“Every three hours, until the cold begins to mend, and after that, every four. You did quite right, Victoria. There is nothing like it. I cured your uncle once in less than a day and a half. And what did you say was the name of the book, Honor?”

“I doubt if you have ever heard of it, Aunt Sophia,” said Honor, as she drew it forth from its hiding-place. “The name of it—”

“Oh, please don’t stop to discuss books!” cried Katherine. “There is something else far more important to be talked about. We don’t want to go to Boston to live, Aunt Sophia. We don’t want to be your secretary and dust your bric-á-brac. We don’t want to go to boarding-school.”

Mrs. Wentworth Ward looked at her calmly.

“My dear, that makes no particular difference,” said she. “We cannot always do what we wish. I am your father’s sister, and it is proper that you should live with me. It was very much like your father to omit making me your legal guardian. Why he should have appointed Dickinson Abbott instead of me, I cannot imagine, but he did, and what is done cannot be undone. However, that is neither here nor there. I offer you a home with me. You are too young to live here alone, and there are other reasons against it also. It is quite out of the question.”

A profound silence followed this speech. The plan proposed by their aunt was so appalling that the girls were unable to collect their ideas sufficiently to reply. Mrs. Wentworth Ward took out her watch.

“I must return in the next train,” said she. “I have a charity association meeting at half after eleven. I preferred to see you all together and tell you this, rather than send for one of you to come to me, or rather than write to you. This room looks rather disorderly, I think. Honor, that is a wretched waitress of yours. When you come to Beacon Street, I will give you lessons in housekeeping. This place had better be rented; you cannot keep it up otherwise. Katherine, what have you been buying?”

The lady had risen and had been walking about the room on a tour of inspection, while she thus criticised. She was standing now in a little recess formed by the window curtain. On a table within it was the silversmith’s box, the lid half off, and in the paper which had wrapped it, the address “Miss Katherine Starr” being in full view. The tissue papers which covered the contents were ruthlessly drawn aside by Mrs. Wentworth Ward, and the silver mirror exposed to view.

“Surely you have not been buying this!” she exclaimed, holding it up and looking first at her own countenance reflected in the one side and then at the large monogram of “K. R. S.” engraved upon the frosted surface of the other.

“Why yes, Aunt Sophia! Why not?” returned her niece.

“How much did you give for it?”

“That is an awfully odd question, Aunt Sophia, but fortunately I don’t mind telling you. It was only fifteen dollars. It is a gem, isn’t it, for the price? And it matches the rest of my silver beautifully.”

“But where did you get the money to buy such a thing as this with?”

“Aunt Sophia! My own money, of course.”

“Your own money! Then let me tell you, Katherine, that there is very little money for you to call your own, and none to throw away on silver handglasses. I really don’t know what you are thinking of, nor Dickinson Abbott, either! When you come to live with me I shall teach you economy.”

“When we do!” murmured Katherine, as she replaced the glass in its wrappings and put it back in the box. Fortunately the rustle of the paper rendered her remark inaudible.

“Honor, it is absurd!” continued Mrs. Wentworth Ward. “What do you mean by allowing Katherine to spend money in this way? You are simply a parcel of children, and it is more than time that there was some one to keep you in order.”

“Katherine has a perfect right to spend her money as she pleases, Aunt Sophia,” said Honor. She had been remonstrating sharply with her sister upon this very subject before the arrival of their aunt, but now she warmly espoused her cause in the presence of their common enemy. “It is her money. I have nothing to say about it.”

And she again removed the stopper of the camphor bottle.

“Nonsense! you are the eldest of the family, and the responsibility lies with you. That eternal application of camphor is bad for you, Honor. It does not really cure you, either. The relief is only temporary.”

“It may be temporary, but is very pleasant,” said Honor; “as pleasant as anything can be when one has a bad cold.”

“You will come to me the first of December,” continued Mrs. Ward, paying no further attention to these matters of minor importance, but reverting to her chief topic. “Peter and the younger girls will go next week to school, as the term has begun, and no time should be lost. It will be just as well to have them out of the way when you are closing up here.”

“But, Aunt Sophia,” cried Honor, “you can’t really mean all this! Why should we do it? Why should we leave our home? Why can’t we stay on here as our dear father intended we should? I am twenty-one, and quite capable of looking after the others, and the children are well placed at school. You are very kind to make all these arrangements for us, but though we thank you very much, we don’t want to accept them. We prefer to stay as we are.”

“Victoria, kindly see if the carriage has come back for me. I told the man to be here without fail,” said Mrs. Wentworth Ward, snapping the lid of her watch as she spoke. “Katherine, help me with my cloak, if you please. Is it dry? Ah, yes, Honor, when you see Dickinson Abbott, you will be made to understand why these arrangements have become necessary. It is easy to talk of living on here, but it requires money to do that—money, and you have scarcely a cent. The carriage has come, Victoria? Very well, then, good-bye! Tell Peter he should have come in to see me. You will hear from me again next week. In the meantime you had better begin your packing. I will come out and help you to put the house in order to let. I am sorry I have not time to stay longer, but after all, further discussion is unnecessary.”

And again the front door was opened, again the northeast wind blew in, and Mrs. Wentworth Ward of Boston went out.

The door had scarcely closed behind her when that leading from the back of the house to the hall was carefully opened, and a boy’s face appeared at the crack.

“Has she gone?” inquired the owner of the face in a loud whisper. “I say, Vic, has she gone?”

But Victoria did not reply. She had hastened to rejoin her sisters in the dining-room after bidding her aunt good-bye, and they were now looking at one another in consternation. What did Aunt Sophia mean?

Peter, seeing for himself that the coast was clear, sauntered into the room.

CHAPTER II.

THE STARRS HOLD A FAMILY COUNCIL.

PETER STARR was the only boy among four sisters. Had he been questioned closely upon the subject, he probably would have replied, “Yes, and there are four too many!” This is what he would have said, perhaps, but it is doubtful if such a reply would have been altogether truthful. Peter’s sisters were very useful to him, at times, although there were occasions when it would have been pleasant to do exactly that which he, and he alone, wished to do, instead of being dragged in four different directions by the conflicting opinions of his four sisters.

Sophy he could manage, it was true, and Victoria he thought he managed, though sometimes it occurred to him to wonder if Vic were not in reality managing him, unknown to himself. But Honor and Katherine openly defied him, and were fond of ordering him about in a manner which was annoying, to say the least. Peter spent the greater part of his time in endeavoring to frustrate the plans made by Honor and Katherine in his behalf.

To-day, fortunately for him, Honor’s cold prevented her from being aware of the odor of the barn which accompanied him into the room, and Katherine was too much absorbed in the conversation to remark upon it. Victoria and Sophy did not notice those things.

“Has the ancient war-horse gone?” asked Peter.

“My dear boy, you oughtn’t!” remonstrated Honor; “indeed you shouldn’t call her that.”

“Why not? I am sure she is ancient, and she is a war-horse, for she loves a battle and the sound of prancings. She’s always arguing about something or other. What was it to-day? I heard her talking, so I stayed in the kitchen till she had gone.”

Honor tried to look shocked, but the others laughed audibly and then quickly became silent.

“We had better send for Mr. Abbott,” said Victoria, “and find out just what Aunt Sophia means. If she only could have taken time to explain to us a little!”

“That is a good idea,” said Honor and Katherine together.

“We will telegraph him this morning and ask him to come out as soon as possible,” added Honor. “Perhaps he will come this afternoon.”

“In all this storm?” asked Victoria, glancing at the weather.

The rain was descending in torrents, pattering on the tin roof of the piazza, and pouring in a steady stream from the water-spout.

“Why not?” said Honor. “Aunt Sophia came, and Mr. Abbott doesn’t mind weather. You know he told us to send for him whenever we needed him, and I am sure we need him now. Probably he will come out this afternoon. Peter, put on your rubber coat, please, and be sure to wear your rubber boots.”

“What for?” asked Peter, calmly. “I am very comfortable as I am.”

“To go to the station with a telegram, child, of course! Vic, give me a pencil and paper, please, and I will write it. I wish you would get some telegraph blanks, Peter. Do bring some home with you, for they are such a convenience. Now, let me see. ‘Mr. Dickinson Abbott,—State Street, Boston. Aunt Sophia has been here and has told us’—dear me, that is nine words before I began to tell him what she has told us,” said Honor, biting the end of her pencil.

“Oh, there is ever so much you can scratch out,” said Katherine, taking the paper. “‘Sophia,’ for one. He knows we have only one aunt—for which blessing let us be thankful! ‘Aunt has been here and says—’ no, ‘Aunt here and says we must go there to live because—’”

“Will it do to put all that in a telegram?” queried Victoria. “Why not just say, ‘Please come and see us; we want to talk to you on matters of importance.’”

“That will do very well,” said Katherine, writing it, “and only fifteen words. Those extra five won’t cost much more.”

“We could leave out ‘please,’” said Victoria.

“That wouldn’t be polite.”

“It isn’t necessary to be so very polite in a telegram,” remarked Honor, as she erased the word, “and if it is true that we have no money, we had better begin at once to be economical. And we could say ‘important matters,’ instead of ‘matters of importance.’ That would bring it down.”

“And save five cents, I suppose,” laughed Katherine, derisively. “However, far be it from me to frustrate your good intentions.”

“There,” said Honor, laying down her pencil and reading the amended message; “‘Come see us. We want to talk on important matters.’ Exactly ten words, and now my name—‘Honor Starr.’ Peter, are you ready? Why, you haven’t stirred! Peter!”

And all his sisters with one voice exclaimed reproachfully, “Peter!”

“Well, what’s the matter with Peter?” inquired that youth as he extended first one foot and then the other to the genial warmth of the blaze. He was sitting in an arm-chair before the fire. He was leaning back, and his hands were in his pockets. Peter was tall for his age, which was thirteen, and well developed. His hair and eyes were brown, as were those of all the family but Victoria, and he looked very much like Katherine.

“Why are you not ready? You know we want you to go to the telegraph office. There is no time to be lost, for Mr. Abbott will have gone home. It is Saturday, and you know he always leaves the office early on Saturday. Do hurry, Peter!”

All the sisters were talking at once, even Sophy adding her voice to the clamor.

“Keep cool! keep cool!” remarked Peter, continuing to warm his feet; “who’s the telegram to?”

“Mr. Abbott, you know, Peter!”

“What for?”

“To ask him to come. You have heard us talking, Peter! Surely you are not deaf. Do hurry!”

“What’s the use? You needn’t telegraph him.”

“Why not? Oh, don’t stop to argue, you dreadful boy!” cried Katherine. “Just go at once. We want Mr. Abbott.”

“Well, you’re going to get him, and I’m not going out in this storm when there’s no reason for it. Mr. Abbott is coming this afternoon.”

“Why, Peter, how do you know?”

“A telegram came from him this morning. I was at the station when it came, and the operator read it off to me while it was coming, as he said it was to us. I’m going to learn telegraphy some day. It must be lots of fun to read all the messages and know what everybody is telegraphing about.”

He was searching in his pockets as he spoke.

“I must have left it down at the barn, but it was only to say he was coming on the two-twenty train. I’ll get it when I go down to give the rabbits their dinner.”

“I don’t think there ever was such a provoking boy as you!” exclaimed Honor, lying back upon the sofa, quite exhausted by her brief moment of activity in writing the telegram. “If you only could have told us this before!”

“You didn’t ask me, and you didn’t give me a chance, either,” responded Peter. “And now I wish you’d tell me something. What is all this fuss about, and what do you want Mr. Abbott for? What kind of a shindy has the war-horse been cutting up?”

“She says that you children are to go to boarding-school, and that Honor and I are to go live with her,” replied Katherine.

Peter gave a long, low whistle and stared at the fire.

“Are you going to?” asked he.

“Not if we can help it,” was the reply.

“Good for you! Neither am I. Go to boarding-school! Live with Aunt Sophia! Whew!”

And the five sat there in silence for a few moments, while the wind blew and the rain poured down without, and their Aunt Sophia was being borne rapidly back to Boston in the train, satisfied that she had accomplished her object and had done her duty, and that even now her nieces had begun to make ready for their flight from the old home.

The Starrs had lived at Glen Arden all their lives. They were all born in the old house, as had been also their father and their grandfather. So had their Aunt Sophia, as to that matter; but apparently her early marriage had counteracted the effect of old associations. She had no time to give to sentiment, and she considered that a home on Beacon Street would amply compensate her brother’s children for whatever they should be forced to forego.

She was sorry for them, it is true, but her sympathy was somewhat diluted by the reflection that she had always said that her brother and her brother’s wife were extravagant. The state of the family finances at present only went to prove the truth of this statement, and she was more than convinced that Katherine had inherited the expensive tastes of her parents. Fifteen dollars for a handglass! Mrs. Wentworth Ward bristled with indignation at the thought of it.

It was three months now since Mr. Peter Starr had died. His wife had been dead for some years, and the children might be said to have brought themselves up. There had been no one to go there to take charge when their mother died, and though there had been an occasional governess, she had been granted but little authority, and affairs went more smoothly when there was no one.

The girls adored their father, and his slightest word was law when he chose to speak it; but as a rule he refrained from directing his family in the smaller matters of life. He was an indolent, dreamy man, who since his wife’s death had spent the greater part of his time among his books. Mrs. Wentworth Ward had frequently remonstrated with him upon the laxity of his management of his children, but he had acquired the habit of thinking that Sophia was unduly particular, and therefore he paid but little attention to her criticisms. Honor kept house very well, he always said, and the children never gave him any trouble. He liked them to be natural.

It was in August that Mr. Starr died, so suddenly that it was many weeks before his family could realize the fact that the gentle, kindly presence was no longer among them. They missed their father sadly, and Honor sometimes felt overburdened with a sense of the responsibility which was now hers. To be sure, she had kept house for years, and had practically brought up the younger children; but there had always been her father to turn to in matters of importance, there had always been his smile to encourage her, his few words of appreciation to cheer her when the children had been troublesome, or household affairs had gone wrong.

Mr. Dickinson Abbott, an old friend of Mr. Starr’s, had, according to his will, been appointed guardian of the family and trustee of the estate. There had always been plenty of money, and Honor had supposed that there always would be. She could not imagine what her Aunt Sophia had meant by her remarks that morning.

Katherine had finished school, but intended to devote herself to her music this winter, going to Boston several times a week for the purpose, and practising with great regularity and industry. Katherine, though inclined to be flighty and unmanageable at times, was wholly devoted to music. Victoria, Sophy, and Peter went to private schools in Fordham, upon the outskirts of which suburban town Glen Arden was situated.

Glen Arden itself was a beautiful old place on the banks of the Charles River. A pine grove hid the view of the river from the house, but the gentle, winding stream was there within a stone’s throw of the barn, and at the foot of the steep bank with which the grove terminated. A small branch railroad crossed the river at the Starrs’ place, and a tiny station was situated near the entrance to their grounds. The main station was half a mile away in “the village,” as the Starrs continued to designate it, although it had long ago been incorporated into the city of Fordham.

Shortly after twelve o’clock of this eventful Saturday in November the rain abated somewhat, and at three, when the train arrived upon which Mr. Abbott was expected, it had actually ceased for the time being at least.

The girls were in the parlor, Katherine at the piano, and Honor with a bit of work in her hands. She had revived somewhat, and sat curled up in a corner of the divan which occupied the western window. There was never much light in the parlor of Glen Arden even on a clear day, for the trees grew so thick near the house. Mr. Starr and his father before him had loved each individual tree, and many of them had been planted with their own hands, usually upon some occasion for family rejoicing. The love of their trees was a family heritage.

Victoria was on her knees before the hearth, coaxing into a blaze the logs which had been heaped there. With each puff of the bellows a small flame leaped up, lighting her face and dancing before her intently gazing brown eyes. Vic was not considered to be as pretty as Honor or Katherine, but already a fair amount of character was depicted in her face. Her features were too irregular for beauty, but her hair was pretty. There was not much of it, for it was so curly that it had never grown beyond her shoulders, but its color of reddish gold was very striking, and in the firelight this afternoon it looked like a golden halo which framed her flushed face.

No one knew yet in just which direction Victoria’s character would develop, but her family had a latent conviction that she would “be something,” for in many ways she was so unlike other people.

Peter and Sophy had gone to the train to meet Mr. Abbott, who was a prime favorite with them all, and presently they were seen coming along the grassy path, which led under the trees across the lawn directly from the little station, and was a much shorter course than to follow the road.

“Well, here you all are!” said Mr. Abbott, when he had divested himself of his mackintosh in the hall and had come into the parlor. “Every one of you; and Vic has made a grand fire to cheer the wanderer and the wayfarer this rainy day. Nasty weather, this! Honor, how did you get such a cold? You must take care of it, child. I don’t like those pale cheeks.”

“How good you are to come out such a day, Mr. Abbott!” said Honor, as she drew forward an arm-chair for her guest. “Just as good as you can be. We want to see you so much, and were on the point of telegraphing to you when we heard of your message to us.”

“Ah, that is good!” said he, leaning forward and warming his hands at the blaze. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man of about sixty-five, with gray hair and beard, and kindly eyes. The Starrs all loved him dearly, and he had been their father’s most valued friend.

“I like to come where I am wanted,” he continued, “and I am always glad to come here. Dear me, though, I can’t get used to it without your father.”

“Neither can we,” said Honor, her eyes filling with tears as she spoke. “Everything is changed without him, and Aunt Sophia has been here to-day and wants to make more changes.”

“Ah, your aunt has been here, has she?” exclaimed Mr. Abbott, quickly. “And what plan did she suggest?”

“Why, do you know about it, and is it really true, then?” asked Honor, wonderingly. “And have you come to tell us the same thing?”

“How do I know, my dear, until I hear what she has told you?” said he, with an attempt at lightness.

“The most absurd thing you ever heard of,” said Katherine. “She says we must go there to live. Just fancy us living with Aunt Sophia!”

“And that we are to go to boarding-school,” put in Sophy, who had seated herself on the arm of her guardian’s chair.

“And that we must rent the place,” continued Honor. “Rent this place where no one has ever lived but Starrs! Just imagine what father’s feelings would have been if it had ever been suggested to him that strangers should have Glen Arden!”

“Catch me going to Boston to live,” remarked Peter. “I could stand boarding-school on a pinch, but Boston, never!”

Victoria said nothing, but she watched Mr. Abbott’s face. She noticed that it had become very grave.

“And you wouldn’t like it?” said he.

“Like it! Why, Mr. Abbott, why should we do it? Of course we don’t like it. The very idea is absurd.” They were all talking together.

“Why should Aunt Sophia suggest such a preposterous arrangement?” continued Honor. “We are very much alone, it is true; but we can’t help that. I have always been in the habit of keeping house; father really had very little to do with it. Of course it is very hard to be without him, but we must make up our minds to that, and get along as best we can. We can do that better here, where every corner of the house and place is associated with him, and which he loved, than we could if we went to live with Aunt Sophia. Why, Mr. Abbott, it would simply kill us all to live with Aunt Sophia.”

“Indeed it would,” added the others, with conviction.

“For all that,” said their guardian, gravely, “your Aunt Sophia is very good to offer to do all this for you. I didn’t know whether she would or not. But I have known her for forty years or more, and I have always found that she did what she considered to be her duty. Trust a New England woman for that.”

“But what do you mean?” asked Honor, in alarm. “Why is it her duty, Mr. Abbott? Father intended that we should live here. He left it so in his will, didn’t he? Why should Aunt Sophia suggest anything different?”

“My dear,” said Mr. Abbott, rising as he spoke, and standing with his back to the fire, “I may as well tell you plainly. It is what I came this afternoon to do. There is very little money for you to live on. Your father’s affairs were—well, were somewhat involved. An investment which he thought very highly of, and in which he put about all he owned, has gone to pieces since his death. I am glad he never knew it. There is all this real estate, to be sure; but that means nothing in the present state of the market. You have,—I must speak plainly, my dear children,—you have practically nothing to live upon at present. Your aunt is very good to offer you a home and your education. I went to see her a week ago, to tell her the state of affairs, and since then I have been thinking over how it was best to tell you, and what had better be done. I could not put it off any longer.”

“Do you mean that we are really poor?” asked Honor, in a quiet voice, when he had finished speaking.

“Very poor, indeed. You have scarcely anything.”

“Exactly what do you mean by ‘scarcely anything’?”

“You have the place, which is an expensive one to keep up, and a very few hundred dollars a year, upon which to live and be educated and clothed. Your aunt’s offer is a relief to me. I am glad she made it, but, as I say, I thought she would. Sophia Ward may be peculiar, and perhaps a trifle aggravating, but she is certainly conscientious.”

The Starrs gazed at one another blankly. An unkind fate appeared to be descending upon them, in a great black cloud. They did not realize yet the fact that they were poor. This knowledge was entirely swallowed up by the deplorable prospect of carrying out the views of their Aunt Sophia, by going to live with her. They had counted upon their guardian’s support in declining her invitation, and now to their surprise he declared that they were fortunate to have received it. They were too ignorant of poverty to know what other significance his words might have.

It was Victoria who reverted to this part of the subject.

“Do you really mean,” said she, “that we haven’t got enough money to live on? That if we stay here, we—it really seems absurd to say it, but I want to know exactly, Mr. Abbott—we shan’t have enough to eat, perhaps?”

“I really mean it,” replied her guardian.

He did not tell them that there was actually no money which they could call their own. The “few hundreds” of which he had vaguely spoken, he intended to give them from his own income, and he was far from being a rich man.

CHAPTER III.

A DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.

IT was evening, and Mr. Abbott had returned to Boston. He had declined staying to dinner, but had promised to come again early in the week. By that time the Starrs would have more fully realized the situation, and would be able to talk more rationally, he thought. He must give them time to accustom themselves to the great change in their prospects. At present they seemed to be stunned, and no wonder.

“It is terrible, terrible!” said Mr. Abbott as he left Glen Arden. “Poor children! I am sorry for them. I am only thankful that my old friend was spared the knowledge of it all. Peter never was a business man, and if he had taken my advice, his money would never have gone into such a worthless concern as that railroad has proved to be. Poor children, I am sorry enough!”

Mr. Abbott had no children of his own, but he had a father’s heart, and it ached as he thought of the sad-faced group which he had just left. They knew so little of life, and it seemed to be beginning badly for them.

Dinner was eaten almost in silence, but afterwards, when the family had returned to the parlor and the lamps were lighted, and the room looked just as they had always known it since they could remember,—except that the dear father was no longer there,—Honor’s self-control, which she had bravely kept until now, deserted her for an instant. She covered her face with her handkerchief and gave a little sob. Then she quickly dried her eyes.

“I will not give way!” she said. “If I once do, it will be the end of everything; and we must keep calm and try to think clearly. I see no way out of it, girls. It really seems as if we must give up, and go live-with Aunt Sophia.”

Katherine started from her chair and began to walk rapidly up and down the room. Katherine was tall and very slender, and her eyes and hair were the darkest of the family. She was an excitable person, and this remark of Honor’s, although it entirely coincided with what she feared, had a most exasperating effect upon her.

“Never!” she said. “Honor, how can you say such a thing? Are you going to meekly give in and do just what Aunt Sophia says, after all? I should think you would have more spirit. I—I would rather do anything than that. Scrubbing floors would be better than dusting Aunt Sophia’s ugly china, and writing her endless notes about stupid meetings. Really, Honor, I am surprised that you can sit there and calmly say you are willing to do it!”

“I didn’t say that I was willing,” said Honor; “and, Katherine, you know I am not. And, as for being calm—but what is the use of discussing that? We have got to live, and we have no money; therefore, if some one offers us homes and educations, I suppose there is nothing for us to do but say, ‘thank you,’ and meekly take them.”

“You may, but I never will.”

“What will you do?”

“Give music lessons.”

“But where will you live?”

“Board somewhere alone, I suppose. Lots of women do that who have to support themselves.”

“But not women that are as young as you are, and who have been brought up as you have been.”

“I can’t help my bringing up, and I shall rapidly grow older, and I will not go to Aunt Sophia’s.”

“I have an idea,” said Victoria. “I have been thinking about it since before dinner, and what Katherine says about supporting herself just fits in with it.”

“What is it?” asked Honor and Katherine together. They had a great respect for Victoria’s “ideas.”

“Why shouldn’t we all do something to support ourselves? Lots of girls do.”

“Of course they do!” cried Katherine. “Vic, you’re a girl after my own heart. You’re not going to sit quietly down on Beacon Street and be ordered about by Aunt Sophia!” This with a glance at Honor, who was too much interested in Victoria’s proposition, however, to notice it.

“Do you really think we could?” she asked. “What could we do? Katherine has her music, I know, but there is no particular talent that I have, and you haven’t finished school, and there are Peter and Sophy. They couldn’t do anything. And I suppose we should have to leave the place just the same.”

“That is just what I am coming to,” replied Victoria. “It popped into my head before Mr. Abbott went, and I have been thinking about it ever since, and Peter could help a lot if we carry it out, and Sophy too. Why can’t we stay on here, and turn the place to some account?”

“Child, what do you mean?” cried Honor; and even Peter, who had been sitting moodily by a distant table, taking no apparent interest in the conversation, but absorbed in his own gloomy reflections, dropped the paper-cutter which he had been handling and drew nearer.

“What do you mean, Vic?” he asked; “and what can I do to help? It has been bothering me that I can’t do anything as long as I am the only boy in the family.”

Victoria looked at him lovingly. She wished that she might venture to give him a hug for that speech, but she knew that Peter would not like it, so she refrained.

“I mean,” said she, “that we might live on here and make the place pay. We could sell the farm produce, sell the milk—you know we have all those cows. Surely we can’t use all the milk and cream they must give, and there must be horrible waste. Then we could raise other things. I have a thousand ideas. Or hens! We might keep hens and sell the eggs. Or violets! Or mushrooms! I heard of some one not long ago who made a fortune and went abroad on mushrooms and violets.”

Victoria’s voice rose with her rapidly increasing enthusiasm. She could see that she had made a point. Her sisters were distinctly impressed.

“And we shouldn’t have to give up the place, after all!” cried Honor. “Victoria, you are brilliant! Come here, child, and let me kiss you.”

“Or we could have a school,” continued Victoria. “Katherine could teach the music, and I the small children, while you, Honor, would be the principal. It might even be a boarding-school. We have lots of room. Indeed, girls, there are ever so many things we can do if we only put our minds to it. The farming project seems really the best plan, though, for Peter could be of such use there. He loves out-of-door things so much.”

“But about the children’s schooling?” suggested Honor. “If we had a school here, we could teach Sophy.”

“I know,” said Victoria, “I thought of that. We have got to talk the whole thing over and consult with Mr. Abbott. It requires a lot of thought. But I am glad you see some good in the idea. I was almost afraid to suggest it for fear you would frown it down.”

“Frown down anything that would save us from a life at No.—Beacon Street?” cried Katherine. “Never! Victoria, my child, you have preserved my reason. I verily believe I should have become quite insane if we had been made to go to Aunt Sophia’s, after all. I must give vent to my feelings.”

And she seated herself at the piano and played so madly and yet so brilliantly that the others were forced to listen to her, partly because they wanted to and partly because they could not hear one another’s voices above the din of the crashing chords. When she had finished, she twirled around on the piano stool.

“There!” she exclaimed. “Now I feel better and can discuss it calmly. I already see myself sailing for Germany to study under foreign masters, my pockets stuffed with the proceeds of music lessons and violets. How shall we sell them? Shall we send Sophy in to stand at the corner of Tremont Street and Temple Place with little bunches?”

“Kathie!” cried Sophy, reproachfully. “Must I really, Honor?”

“No, of course not,” said Honor, reassuringly. “Katherine is only teasing you. The idea of our letting our baby do that!” While Katherine laughed immoderately at Sophy’s startled face. “Now we must talk it over calmly and get our ideas into shape before we see Mr. Abbott again, so that we can convince him at once,” continued Honor. “Suppose we discuss it to-night, and then think it over to ourselves to-morrow, and to-morrow night, at this time, we will each say what we think we had better do. Then we can see which will be the best plan. Oh, Vicky dear, you are a perfect treasure!”

“My sister Vic is a perfect brick!” cried Katherine, hugging her as she spoke.

Peter said nothing, but walked slowly out of the room, with his hands in his pockets.

“Peter has gone up to the workshop to think about it,” remarked Sophy, sagely.

“Yes; he reminds me of father in that,” said Honor. “He always went there after he had had a disagreeable business letter, or something troublesome. Dearest father! I am glad he never knew that we were going to be poor, he would have felt so badly. But do you know, girls, I really don’t mind it a bit, now. I feel as if it were going to be interesting. Just think of the satisfaction it will be to support ourselves!”

“I am going to see about my Symphony concert tickets right away,” said Katherine. “I didn’t know whether I had better go this winter when I heard that we had no money, but now that we are going to make so much I shall be able to, and I really ought to do everything to improve my music if I am going to give lessons.”

“Yes,” said Honor, though somewhat doubtfully, Katherine thought. “I—I think, though, that we shall have to be very economical even though we are going to make so much. I won’t order the jacket at Hollander’s I was thinking of. I’ll try at some cheaper place. If you think it will be very extravagant to have one made to order, I will try to find one ready made. What do you think?”

She looked at Victoria as she spoke. Victoria hesitated.

“I hate to say it, Honor,” she said at last, “for you are so generous and good, but it really seems as if we ought to get on with as few clothes as possible if we are so very poor. Do you—don’t you think—at least, is your last winter’s coat really hopeless? Wouldn’t it do this year?”

“Why of course it would do,” said Honor. “It isn’t much worn, and it is plain black, but it is frightfully old-fashioned. It has immense sleeves, and they have gone down so this year; but I could have them altered at a cheap tailor’s. You are right, Vic. I won’t get a new one.”

“And there are other things we might be economical in besides clothes,” continued Victoria, staring pensively at the fire. “The table, for instance.”

“My dear child!” cried Honor and Katherine with one voice. “Surely you don’t think we ought to starve ourselves?”

“No, of course not, but we really needn’t have quite so many things. Salad every day at dinner, for instance, and olives. And we don’t need preserves always for lunch, nor such a lot of cake made, and—oh, a great many things. When I was staying at the Carsons’ last year I noticed that they didn’t have nearly so many things as we do, and yet there was always enough, and everything was very good.”

“I hate the idea of a skimpy table,” said Honor. “You know father always liked everything to be very nice. Oh no, my dear! Most of your ideas are good ones, but I really don’t think we ought to starve ourselves.”

“Nor I either,” said Katherine. “I think Honor is right there. Nothing is more horrible than the idea of not having enough food on the table.”

“But I don’t mean that,” persisted Victoria. “I only mean that we don’t need olives and salad and preserves to keep us from being hungry.”

“The preserves don’t cost us a cent but the sugar,” said Honor. “We raise the currants and the pears and the cherries on the place, and even some of the strawberries, so there is no extravagance in turning them into preserves and eating them.”

“That suggests another idea!” exclaimed Victoria. “We might sell preserves at the Woman’s Exchange or somewhere. To be sure, we have always paid a woman to do ours, but we might learn to do them ourselves, and make some money that way.”

The girls discussed long and earnestly the new aspect of affairs, and their many plans for bettering their fortune, and Sophy sat up unnoticed until past her usual bedtime, so absorbed were they all in the unlooked-for problem which had been presented to them that afternoon.

Peter did not appear again, but they heard him whistling in the workshop when they at last went upstairs to bed. Victoria went to the door and found him idly sharpening some tools, apparently giving little thought to the work. She wanted him to go to bed, but she knew that if she told him so, he would probably prolong his labors until far into the night.

“We have been talking it all over, Peter,” said she gaily, “and we are going to think it out by ourselves over Sunday; and then Monday night we are going to tell each other how we want most to set about it,—making our fortunes, I mean. I am going to bed, for I can think better in the dark. I don’t suppose I shall go to sleep for ages. You needn’t hurry, but please put out the light in the back hall when you do come.”

And the mere assurance that he need not hurry sent Peter to his room within five minutes.

The next day was Sunday. When the Starr family awoke, the clouds were still thick, and the air was heavy with dampness; but by nine o’clock the sun was out, and at service time the day was clear. Peter and his four sisters went to church, as usual, and took their places in the family pew,—Peter at the end where his father had always sat, even on the very Sunday before he died. If the minds of the little group in black were occupied with other thoughts than those suggested by the service, they gave no outward sign of it. In the afternoon they all went to Sunday school as usual,—Honor and Katherine to teach, and the others to be taught; and after it was over Katherine and Victoria stayed to the afternoon service. Honor’s cold forced her to go home, and Peter and Sophy accompanied her.

No one mentioned the subject in which they were all so vitally interested, until the next evening, when they were once more gathered about the parlor fire.

“Now,” said Honor, drawing up a chair, and settling herself as if for the evening, “the time has at last come! I have scarcely been able to wait for night, for every one of you have looked as if you were bristling with ideas all day; but I thought I had better not begin the subject by asking for anything. Suppose we all take turns, beginning with the youngest, and each say what we think will be the quickest and the surest way of making our fortunes.”

But Sophy felt shy at being called upon, and they all insisted that Honor should state her own views first, as she was the eldest. Her idea was to open a boarding-school during the winter, and to take boarders in summer.

“When the place looks so lovely,” said she, “and there would be no necessity if we did that for us to alter our way of living, as regards the table. We should be obliged to have everything very nice if people were boarding here, and that would be such a comfort.”

Katherine approved of a school, though perhaps not a boarding-school, and she thought it would be well for them to have a little time to themselves in summer.

“We shall want to go away for a while to get rested,” she remarked; “to the seashore or the mountains, you know, so we had better not have a houseful of boarders. The school would be better, and I can teach other things in it besides music.”

Victoria inclined towards working the farm in some way, in which Peter agreed with her. She pointed out that boarders in summer would perhaps be hard to procure, and also that it would be impossible to go to the mountains or the sea, as Katherine suggested, and leave the place to take care of itself, even if there were no boarders, and even if they had made enough money to warrant such an expense. On the other hand, the working of the farm presented endless possibilities. There was much good sense in what she said, as Honor and Katherine were forced to admit. They determined to wait, however, before actually deciding upon their future course, until they should see Mr. Abbott; and Honor wrote to him that night, begging him to come to Glen Arden again as soon as it should be convenient, as they wished his advice.

“We have some new ideas,” she wrote, “and we cannot rest until we hear you say they are good ones.”

Mr. Abbott replied in person to the note; for he was sincerely anxious about the welfare of his wards, and was also curious to know what they had thought of as a means of escape from the grasp of their Aunt Sophia. He came, therefore, on Tuesday afternoon.

At first he was sceptical. The mere idea that five young persons, all under twenty-two, and four of them girls, should set out to support themselves, with no experience to call upon, and in absolute ignorance of the magnitude of that which they were about to undertake, seemed to him preposterous, and he did not hesitate to tell them so.

But in spite of himself, he was soon impressed by their earnestness. Their enthusiasm was contagious, and there was certainly a fair amount of common sense in their remarks. Mr. Abbott allowed himself to be persuaded to stay to dinner, and before the evening was over, he was discussing as eagerly as any one of them the possibilities of selling butter and of teaching children their alphabet; while the idea of raising violets appealed strongly to his flower-loving soul.

He promised, when he bade his wards good night, to call upon their aunt the next day, and place the subject before her; and he would do his best to win her approval, difficult as he knew that would be. In the meantime, they might be sure of his consent and support. He only wished to impress upon them, however, that they should decide upon a course which would necessitate as little outlay as possible.

“Saving money counts for as much as making it, in the long run,” said he. “Don’t forget that. And I am glad that you live in a place which has good public schools. Peter’s education must not be forgotten, nor should Victoria’s and Sophy’s. I shall not approve at all of any scheme which would interfere with their schooling. Don’t forget that, either.”

CHAPTER IV.

KATHERINE AS A FINANCIER.

NEEDLESS to say, Mrs. Wentworth Ward disapproved absolutely of her nieces’ projects. The mere fact of their defiance of her authority was unheard of, and that they should dream of such impossible plans for their self-support she considered at first beneath her notice. The children could not be in earnest, she said, and she thought it was scarcely the time for jesting.

When she was finally made to understand that the children were very much in earnest, she cancelled all her engagements for that afternoon and hurried to the Boston and Albany station. She must lose no time in informing them that they should never have her consent, and that they must at once give up any such absurd ideas as these undoubtedly were.

Long were the arguments and futile were the discussions which ensued upon her arrival. She found that her brother’s children had inherited no small amount of the Starr determination, not to say obstinacy, and when they parted she was forced to acknowledge herself vanquished, for the time being at least. Mrs. Wentworth Ward comforted herself with the reflection, which she did not hesitate to put into words, that the time would come when they would grow weary of their efforts and be glad to yield and come to her for help.

“And my home is still open to you,” she said as she took her departure. “Though you defy my authority and persist in your headstrong course, I shall never forget that you are my brother’s children. The time will come when you will remember this. Mark my words!”

“Wouldn’t it be too dreadful if we did have to go to her for help, after all?” said Honor, as the train moved away. The three older girls had accompanied their aunt to the little station. “Wouldn’t she simply shriek at us, ‘I told you so!’”

“She will never have the chance if I can prevent it,” returned Katherine. “Rather than go to Aunt Sophia for help after all that has been said this afternoon I would rather—I would rather scrub floors.”

Which was Katherine’s favorite simile for the extreme of hard work, although the wildest flights of the imagination could scarcely picture her in such an employment.

“I shall never give Aunt Sophia any such satisfaction as that,” she added, with decision.

“I am perfectly astonished that she gave in at last,” remarked Victoria, as the three walked arm in arm across the lawn. “I really thought she would stick it out to the very end, and perhaps refuse to have anything more to do with us.”

“I didn’t,” said Katherine. “Do you know I think it is almost a relief to Aunt Sophia that she isn’t obliged to have us there, after all. We should interfere dreadfully with her regular ways, even if she did turn us to account, with her writing and her dusting, and I also think she is very curious to see what we do, and how we come out. She is already looking forward, I plainly see, to the time, when she can prove that she knows more than anybody else, and that we are all dismal failures. For that reason, girls, if for nothing else, we must prove that we are not. We must succeed!”

“Do you think we were at all disrespectful to her?” said Honor.

“No, not a bit. We had to be emphatic. It was the only way to make her understand that we were in earnest.”

“I know, but she is father’s sister and our only near relative, even if she is aggravating, and I think she is fond of us in her own way. It was very good and generous of her to offer to do so much for us.”

“It is certainly in ‘her own way’ that she loves us, if she loves us at all,” said Katherine. “Honor, it must be a terrible bore to have such a conscience as you are burdened with. I’m glad it’s yours, and not mine, and I’m glad, too, that we came out victorious in the scrimmage with our beloved aunt, fond of us though she may be.”

By the end of the week, their plans were made, and they were ready to put them at once into action. The idea of a boarding-school was abandoned. That was absolutely impracticable, as they soon saw for themselves. They had no experience upon which to go to work, and no influence upon which they could depend to bring them pupils.

Honor, however, opened a day school for small children. There happened to be none already in Fordham, and among the friends of the Starrs there were a number who were glad, not only to help the girls in their efforts for self-support, but also to have a class formed for the children whom it was not desirable, because of their extreme youth, to send to the larger schools.

Katherine had already secured several music scholars and hoped for more, while she also intended to help Honor with the school, in which Sophy was to be a pupil. Victoria and Peter left the private schools which they had attended and were transferred to public ones, although Victoria secretly determined that this should be her last winter of study. She felt that she must unite with the others in working for the support of the family. Had not she been the one who had first suggested the idea? In the meantime she planted her violet bed and proceeded to investigate the cultivation of mushrooms.

The house servants were all informed that they must go, and a new “maid of all work” was engaged, who was expected to perform wonders in the kitchen and elsewhere. The gardener and the coachman were also dismissed, and the horses and cows were sold. The girls had concluded that it would be unwise at present to attempt to make butter, for with their many other duties it would be impossible to attend to it. A man who lived near could be called upon to come occasionally if one were needed upon the place, and when spring approached they could engage some one regularly, if they decided to raise vegetables for sale.

At present their chief thought was the school. A room on the second floor was to be used for the purpose, the bedstead and bureau removed, and some desks, which Katherine went to Boston to buy, were to be placed there in readiness for the pupils. There had been some discussion about the purchase of these desks, Victoria suggesting that tables would do for the present, until they should have a little more ready money, and should also be able to see whether the number of scholars would warrant such an outlay.

But Katherine was strongly of the opinion that desks would add greatly to the professional appearance of the room, and would have, in consequence, a beneficial effect upon the children, and as Honor agreed with her in this, she went off triumphantly to Boston with the money in her pocket with which she was to pay for them. Neither Honor nor Victoria was able to go with her, but she professed herself quite equal to the task of choosing the necessary articles without her sisters’ help.

When she returned she announced to them that she had bought not only six small desks with chairs to match, but also a larger desk for Honor, a map of the world to hang upon the wall, and a blackboard.

“You know it is really important to have all these things,” said she. “A schoolroom without a map would be like bread without butter, and this is the cheapest and the most complete thing you ever saw. The United States on one side, and the whole world on the other, and only a dollar. And you needn’t shake your head over the desk for Honor, Victoria! Of course she ought to have a desk.”

“I’m afraid our bread will soon be without butter if you go on in this way,” remarked Victoria. “Honor could have used a table with a drawer.”

“Oh, that wouldn’t do at all!” said Katherine, impatiently. “You have such scrimpy ideas, Vic; I don’t see where you get them. And besides, I did a stroke of business. They allowed me a discount of ten per cent at the furniture store because I was a professional, so it really paid to get all those things. It is great fun to be a professional. I get music cheaper at the music stores, just because I give lessons.”

“But did you have enough money for so many things?” asked the practical younger sister.

“Oh, I haven’t paid for them yet,” rejoined Katherine, easily. “They asked me if I would have them charged, and I said yes. I really thought it would be better to have a bill for them, and there may be more ready money when it comes in, and besides, I needed that money for something else—something that is to be a grand surprise for you all and is to help us make our fortunes. It is coming out by express this afternoon.”

“Katherine, what have you been getting?” exclaimed Honor and Victoria together.

“Oh, just wait!” cried Katherine, gaily, as she left them and went to her room to take off her hat and coat. “I tell you, it is to be a grand surprise. It is coming with the desks and chairs.”

“What do you suppose it is?” asked Honor.

“I am afraid to think,” returned Victoria, “and I think it was a great pity she had those things charged. Perhaps we shan’t have any money at all when the bill comes in.”

“Oh, don’t be afraid, child! Katherine is extravagant, I must confess, but we have six pupils promised, you know, for the school, and she has eight music scholars. We shall be all right, I hope.”

But in spite of these reassuring words Honor felt as uneasy as did Victoria about Katherine’s “surprise.”

“What do you think of the new maid?” asked Victoria, presently. The sisters were in Honor’s room, darning the family stockings by the waning light of the short November day.

“I don’t know what to think,” replied Honor, running her long needle in and out as she crossed and re-crossed a large hole. “I suppose Peter wears out his stockings so quickly because he is such a tramper, but this one is discouraging. Do you think it is worth while to spend our precious time over such a hole as this, Vic?”

“I think the stocking would stand a little more wear,” said Vic, laying down her own work and examining critically that of her sister. “I like a good big hole if I am going to darn at all. Running over thin places bores me to death. It is just like life. A big hole is like a big calamity; you can rise above it. But the little botherations are like the thin places. You have got to go over them and patch them up, or else they will go altogether, and yet there is really nothing to show for it in the end, and the doing it tires you out. With a big hole or a big trouble you know just where you are and how you stand. But tell me what you think of the new maid.”

“I am afraid she is like the thin places in the stockings,” said Honor, laughing as she made the comparison. “She requires a great deal of attention, and I don’t know where she is going to burst out next.”

“What is her name?”

“That is the queerest part of her. She told me it was ‘B.’ Lafferty.”

“Bee?” repeated Victoria. “What a curious name! Do you suppose it is short for Beatrice?”

“Not at all. It is the letter B, and it really stands for Bridget, but she told me she never liked the name of Bridget and didn’t wish to be called that. I told her I thought I should, upon which she said she should take the next train back to Boston if we did. Her friends called her ‘B.,’ and we must call her ‘B.,’ or if not ‘B.’ it could be ‘Blanch.’ On the whole, she preferred Blanch, so I suppose it has got to be that, though I can’t imagine anything more inappropriate.”

“You may be thankful she didn’t request us to call her ‘Miss Lafferty,’” laughed Victoria. “I think she is going to be amusing.”

“I hope so,” said Honor, somewhat grimly. “To me at present it seems more tragic than amusing. She won’t have late dinner, for one thing. We have got to dine in the middle of the day after to-night. It really seems as if she meant to rule us, but I shan’t let her.”

The family were engaged in eating the last dinner which they were to be allowed to enjoy in the evening when the Fordham and Boston express wagon was heard coming down the Glen Arden avenue, and shortly afterwards the door which led into the front hall from the kitchen department was flung open by B. Lafferty, who announced as she did so that “a whole lot of furniters had come, and what was she to be afther doin’ wid ’em?”

“Bring them right in here, please,” said Honor. “Peter, won’t you go and help? We shall have to do a good deal ourselves, I suppose, now that we have only one girl,” she added, as Blanch’s heavy tread echoed in the distance, and Peter, who had heard of Katherine’s shopping expedition and was possessed of a lively curiosity, went willingly enough to investigate the result.

The chairs, desks, blackboard, and map had all been brought in, also a globe and a package containing chalk, pencils, copy-books, blank-books, and school stationery of all kinds, which Katherine had forgotten to mention, and then Peter appeared, staggering beneath the weight of a square box. It seemed to be heavy, and he set it down with a sigh of relief.

“There!” said he. “I suppose that is your surprise, Katherine. It weighs a ton, whatever it is.”

“Yes, that is it!” cried Katherine. “Oh, girls, I wonder what you will say when you see it! But look at the desks before we open it. Aren’t they too sweet for anything? And so cheap, too. I forgot to tell you I got a globe. You know a schoolroom is nothing without a globe.”

“But the surprise,” interposed Sophy. “Do show it to us quick, Kathie.”

“I’ve a good mind to make you all guess,” said Katherine, mischievously. She glanced from one to the other as she spoke. It almost seemed as if she were afraid to let them see it, Victoria thought, though she had assumed this air of triumph.

“Oh no, we can’t stop to guess,” said they, and Peter had already begun to remove the lid of the box.

“My eye!” exclaimed he. “Oh, my two eyes, what do I see? Katherine’s been and gone and done it this time!” And he burst into shouts of derisive laughter.

“What is it?” cried the others, as they crowded about and pushed the desks and chairs out of the way, in their haste to see the contents of the mysterious box.

“It is a typewriter,” announced Katherine.

“A typewriter!” repeated her sisters. “What—what for? Why did you buy a typewriter?”

“Why, you stupid children, to typewrite with, of course!”

“But do you know how?”

“No; certainly not. How should I? But I am going to learn. It was a tremendous bargain, and I have been thinking of them for some time without saying anything about it. You know the magazines are full of advertisements of them, and they have made me simply wild to have one. I thought it would be so useful for us to have one in the house, and we can make a lot of money with it.”

“How?” asked Honor.

Something in her voice made Katherine glance at her sister’s face; but Honor was standing in the shadow cast by the staircase, which went up from the centre of the hall.

“Doing typewriting for people, of course. You hear all the time of girls who are typewriters. How dull of comprehension you are to-night, Honor!”

“How much did you give for it?”

“My dear, it was awfully cheap! The man assured me it was a wonderful bargain!”

“They usually do,” remarked Honor, “but you haven’t yet named the price. How much was it, Katherine?”

“It is really a hundred-dollar machine, but they call it second-hand, though it has only been used a little, and so I got it for forty.”

“Forty dollars!” cried Victoria, while Honor’s feelings prevented her for the moment from finding words, and Peter gave utterance to a prolonged whistle of astonishment. “You don’t mean, Katherine, that you have actually spent forty dollars on that?”

“I do,” said Katherine, with an assumption of boldness that she was far from feeling. “Only forty dollars. I assure you it is the cheapest thing I ever saw. I never dreamed of being able to get a decent one for less than fifty at the lowest—and when we are making money with it, you will thank me.”

“But how are we to make money with it?” asked Victoria, while Peter laughed with malicious glee. He had been so often remonstrated with himself for various misdemeanors that he was glad to see his chief critic undergoing the same unpleasant experience. “Do you know how to use it?”

“No, not yet; but that is easily learned. The man offered to give me a lesson, but I was in a hurry, and so he said I could come in any time. He showed me some books on the subject, which I bought, and I can easily puzzle it out myself, I think. It will be something to do in the evening.”

“Have you paid for it, or did you have it charged, too?”

It was Honor who asked the question. She had not spoken for some time, and her voice had the same note which Katherine, who was susceptible to voices, had remarked upon before.

“I paid for it,” she replied. “That is what I wanted the ready money for. I saw it in the window of a typewriter place as I was on my way to the furniture store. I knew I should have to pay ‘cash down’ for it, as they didn’t know me there, while they did at the furniture place. I hope you think I did right, girls. I hope you agree with me.”

“I think,” said Honor, turning slowly and looking at her sister,—“I think you are the most foolish and the most extravagant person I ever saw or heard of. The idea of your spending forty dollars on a typewriter, when we are so poor we can scarcely buy our food, and it was just as much as we could do to scrape the forty dollars together for you to take to Boston to buy the schoolroom furniture with. Oh, that we had never let you go! Can the thing be taken back?”

“No,” said Katherine, shortly.

“Why not?”

“Why of course it can’t, Honor, unless in exchange for another typewriter! Of course the man isn’t going to give me back the money. How foolish you are!”

“Foolishness must run in the family,” said Honor. “I think Aunt Sophia was quite right when she said we were nothing but children and not fit to take care of ourselves. If you go on in this way, we shall soon have to take refuge in Beacon Street, after all. I think you might at least have consulted us before you bought it. I suppose you were afraid to. That is the reason you were so anxious to go yourself to buy the desks. You had made up your mind before you went, to get this thing.”

“I hadn’t at all, Honor,” cried Katherine, stung by this accusation. “I hadn’t the least idea of doing it until I saw them in the window. If I had happened to go through any other street, I should never have dreamed of getting it. It was evidently intended that we should own a typewriter, for I was led right up to the window.”

“An easy sort of philosophy,” remarked Honor.

“Oh well,” interposed Victoria, “it is done, so there is no use in lamenting. We may as well make the best of it, though the next time you go to Boston, Katherine, I think Honor and I had better be on each side of you to keep you from being ‘led up’ to windows. If you had been ‘led’ to Toppan’s window, would you have bought all that you saw there? Or to Shreve’s, or Bigelow’s? Oh, Katherine!”

And then Victoria, who had been undecided for some time as to whether she should laugh or cry, began to laugh.

“I think it is too funny!” she exclaimed. “I feel as if we had a white elephant in the house. In addition to everything else that we have to do we have all got to learn typewriting, so as to make it pay! Oh, Katherine, Katherine!”

Honor hesitated a moment. The situation was amusing, and Victoria’s mirth was contagious, but she felt very angry. Then seeing that Katherine was looking troubled, she decided that she too had better try to laugh it off. After all, it was very funny. And presently they were all laughing so uproariously, that B. Lafferty again opened the door and peeped in at them, wondering what amusing article had come by express.

Suddenly, however, Katherine became sober.

“You will see,” she said, “that after all I was wise to get it. When the money begins to pour in from it, you will see what a brilliant idea it was.”

“I can’t imagine how it is going to pour in, unless you are going to manufacture bank notes with it,” remarked Honor; “but we will see.”

They went back to their forgotten dinner, and after it was finished, they proceeded to arrange the schoolroom. It was again Saturday, and school was to open the following Monday.

Katherine slipped away before long, her absence being at first unnoticed by the others. Presently Peter also disappeared from the room, but he soon returned.

“If you want to see something rich,” said he, “come look over the banisters.”

As has been said, the stairway ascended from the centre of the large square hall. It was very broad, and a gallery ran around the second story, upon which opened the doors of the bedrooms. By leaning over the railing which guarded this gallery, the girls and Peter could see Katherine, who sat in the hall below. She was at work upon the typewriter, the “clickety-click” of the keys coming at long intervals, while she studied the book of instructions.

“The lightning writer!” whispered Peter. “Don’t you wish you could write with a pen as fast as that?”

“Hush!” said Victoria; “don’t let her hear you. But, oh, Honor, we shall have to work extra hard to make up for Katherine’s extravagance! What shall we do with her?”

CHAPTER V.

PETER SEEKS INFORMATION.

“PETER is in one of his moods. He won’t come.”

So announced Sophy, returning from the barn for the third time one day towards the end of the following week.

“But we want him, Sophy. Did you tell him so?” asked Honor.

“That is just the reason he won’t come. When I said, ‘They want you,’ he said, ‘Let ’em want. I’ve got something else to do than be tied to Honor’s apron strings.’ What did he mean, Honor? You hardly ever wear an apron, and I never saw you tie Peter.”

Katherine, who was also present, laughed, as she invariably did when Sophy made a remark of this kind.

“You are the most literal young one I ever saw,” said she. “Did you really suppose, now, that—”

“Never mind!” interposed Honor, who saw that Sophy, always easily moved to tears by Katherine’s criticisms, looked ready to cry. “He means by that that he doesn’t want to do things for us. Very disobliging of him, I think. What is he doing?”

“Sitting on the fence just outside of the barn.”

“Dear me, I wish he would come! Well, Katherine, we shall have to do it ourselves. A boy can be so useful, and it does seem provoking to have one right in the family and not be able to turn him to account. I will hold the step-ladder while you go up. Isn’t it horrid to have to do all this ourselves? I do miss the servants dreadfully.”

The girls were hanging the parlor curtains for the first time in their lives.

“They are going to look horribly, too,” said Katherine. “I really think it would pay, Honor, to have a man come up from Fordham and do it. It wouldn’t cost much.”

“It would cost more than we have got at present,” replied Honor. “No,” she added a little drearily after a moment’s silence, “we’ve got to learn to do these things ourselves. Other people do, and there is no reason why we shouldn’t. Be careful, Katherine. You’re putting that ever so much higher on the right than you did on the left.”

In the meantime Sophy returned once more to the barn. She found that Peter had not moved from his position upon the fence, and as far as she could judge he was still in “one of his moods.” When he saw Sophy approaching for the fourth time, he fixed his gaze yet more intently upon the river, which gleamed beyond the tall pine trees in the grove.

Sophy was a small and slenderly built child of eight. The fact that she was so much younger than her sisters had perhaps caused her to be considered the baby of the family longer than would otherwise have been the case. She was not a pretty child, for her eyes were too large and staring for the small thin face, and the temporary absence of two of her front teeth gave her a grotesque expression. Her hair, which was straight, had been cut short for the sake of convenience, and her cheeks were pale for those of a country child.

Sophy adored her only brother with all the ardor of her childish heart. She considered him the tallest, the strongest, and the handsomest boy in all the town of Fordham, or Boston either, for that matter, and she was his willing slave at all times—a state of affairs which Peter was not slow to recognize and of which he availed himself on every possible occasion.

When Peter was “in one of his moods” he was to Sophy more fascinating than ever. She hung near him, wondering what was the matter, what troublesome thoughts were thronging his brain, and whether it would be possible to offer him any help. She longed to comfort him on these occasions, but never knew how to do it.

This afternoon she seated herself upon a convenient rock and leaned her chin upon her hand, her great brown eyes fastened upon her brother, who was perched upon the fence rail. Peter at first paid no attention to her presence. Then he stirred uneasily. He turned and looked at her, and then looked quickly away again. The stare of those big brown eyes was so unflinching.

“I wish you would go away,” said he at last.

“Why?” asked Sophy.

“Because I’m thinking, and—and you’re such a stare-cat.”

“I won’t any longer,” returned the obliging Sophy, and fixed her eyes at once upon the ground, only now and then raising them for a furtive glance at the motionless figure upon the fence. The mood was lasting a long time, she thought.

It was a mild day in November, and the purple haze in the atmosphere proved that it was Indian summer. There was a delicious smell of autumn in the air, and the smoke of burning brush was borne to them from the distance. One could hear sounds that seemed to come from far away, and in the pasture which lay to the right of the pine grove, a vast number of crows had alighted. Presently, having finished their conference, they rose with one accord and soared far above the tops of the tallest pine trees, cawing to one another as they went. Peter glanced up at them.

“I wish I were a crow,” said he.

Sophy gave a little sigh of relief. He had spoken; he was coming out of his mood.

“Why?” she asked, with alacrity.

“Oh, because—” And then he stopped. Sophy sighed again, this time with disappointment. He was not going to tell her! Presently, he again broke the silence.

“I wish I were anything,” said he; “anything but what I am.”

“Do you wish you were a girl?” asked his little sister.

“No!” exclaimed Peter; “of course not a girl! But anything else. A bird, a beetle, a squirrel. Something alive.”

This was difficult philosophy for Sophy to comprehend. Would the life of a beetle, or even of a bird, be preferable to that of a girl? And was not a girl “alive”? She was about to inquire further, when her brother spoke again.

“I’m tired of it,” said he. “Just tired of it! I’m not going to stand it any longer. I’m going to run away to sea. But if I disappear, Sophy, don’t you tell them where I’ve gone. Don’t tell the girls that I ever said anything about running away to sea; now mind!”

“No,” said Sophy, “I won’t, but I hope you won’t decide to go, Peter. It wouldn’t be a bit nice without you. Why do you want to go?”

“I’ll tell you,” said Peter, leaping to the ground, and seating himself upon a rock. The fence rail had ceased to be comfortable.

“There is nothing for me to do. We are all poor, and the girls have to work, and I can’t do a thing. If I were as old as Honor, I could go into business right away, and make a fortune, and support you all. I’m the only boy in the family, and I ought to be the one to do it. I don’t see why I wasn’t the oldest instead of having three girls older than me to order me around. It just makes me mad. Why, if I had only been the oldest, I’d be finishing college now, and going into a law office, or I’d be a doctor and have lots of patients, or I’d go into business; stocks, or a bank, or something or other. Instead of that I’ve got to knock round here and fuss over little things the girls want me to do, and go to that hateful Hastings School down at Fordham. But what’s the use of talking to you? You don’t understand. You’re nothing but a girl, and a baby one at that.”

Sophy’s great brown eyes filled with tears.

“I know I’m a girl,” she faltered. “I wish I wasn’t, Peter. Indeed I do! I wish you’d please excuse me for being one, for I can’t really help it, but—but—I don’t think I’m such a baby.”

“I’d like to know what you are, then,” said her brother, crossly. “You’re crying now. That proves that you’re a baby. Do you suppose a boy would cry as easily as you do, or any one who wasn’t a baby?”

“What is the matter?” cried a gay voice, as the rustle of dead leaves on the pasture path was heard, and Victoria came into sight. “I heard you ever so far off, and it sounded exactly as if you were scolding, Peter. I got off the train at Waterview and walked up, as I missed the one that connected. I’ve been thinking over something, and I want your advice, Peter.”

She saw at a glance that Sophy had been made unhappy, but she thought it wiser to pass it over unnoticed for the present.

“What is it?” asked her brother, interested in spite of himself. Then he added hastily: “But you’re only making that up to change the subject. You don’t really want my advice. You think I’m scolding Sophy, and so I am. Why, she cries if you say—”

“I do want your advice,” interrupted Victoria; “and if you can’t give it to me, I shall have to ask some other boy or man. It is about mushrooms. Do you know anything at all about them, and do you think it would pay to raise them? I have been reading up about them to-day in the Encyclopædia at school. That was the reason I missed the other train. It seems as if we could make some money out of them if we only tried. It says in the Encyclopædia that the cultivated ones don’t taste as good as the wild ones, but there must be a demand for them, for people use them when the others are out of season. I was wondering whether you would want to undertake it.”

“Do you mean me alone?” asked Peter.

“Yes. You see I have the violets to attend to, and lots of things in the house. We have so much dusting and all that sort of thing to do, now that we have only one maid, and with all I have to study, I really don’t think I can undertake anything more. Couldn’t you read up about them, and find out all you can? You might make a good deal that way.”

A gleam of something like interest had come into Peter’s hitherto depressed-looking face. It quickly faded, however.

“It’s such a little thing,” said he.

“Little? How do you mean?”

“Why, it doesn’t really amount to anything. What is raising mushrooms? Anybody could do that. I want to do something big. If I were only a man, now, I could support you all.”

“Yes, I know you could,” rejoined Victoria, quickly, “and it would be too lovely for anything; but you will be a man some day, Peter, and then you can do it, and in the meantime it seems as if the little things would count. And mushrooms are not so little, either. I mean the raising of them. You might be able to make a good deal that way, and in other gardening.”

“They’d call me a mushroom, I suppose,” said Peter, gloomily, after he had reviewed the situation for a few moments in silence.

“What do you mean?”

“A mushroom, or perhaps a toadstool. More likely a toadstool.”

“Peter! Who would?”

“Those Hastings school-boys.”

“Would they? Why?”

“Because they are hateful,” said Peter, rising and walking about with his hands in his pockets. “The class I am in is nothing but a set of ruffians. I’d like to fight ’em, every one of ’em, and I will some day. They call me the ‘Glen Arden dude’ now. You see I’m the only boy there who has been to a private school. I wish father had never sent me to that school in Boston. I wish—”

“Never mind!” said Victoria, quickly. “Father always did what was quite right. What else do they say?”

“They say I’m tied to my sisters’ apron strings, just because they saw me with Honor and Katherine yesterday when I was carrying the bundles. I’ll never go to Fordham with any of you girls again, and I’m not going to carry your bundles if I do go.”

Quickly a look of scorn gathered in Victoria’s expressive face. Her brown eyes fairly gleamed with it as they regarded her brother.

“What a poor-spirited boy you must be, Peter!” said she.

“Poor-spirited!” exclaimed Peter. “Why, I’m willing to fight any boy or any two boys in that school, and I will yet. I’d like to know what you mean by that, Vic!”

“Oh, I don’t mean that you are not brave enough if there is any fighting to be done,” said she. “I’d trust you quickly enough for that, but I think you are very poor-spirited to be afraid to carry our bundles or be seen with any of us, just because those common boys that go to the Hastings School in Fordham chose to laugh at you for doing it. If you go on in this way, you won’t be the kind of man father was, or that Mr. Abbott is. Mr. Abbott is only too glad to do things for women, and father was just like him in that. And if you are not willing to do these little things for us now, I don’t believe you will take care of us when you grow up, so we may as well get accustomed to taking care of ourselves.”

Peter’s face flushed. He recognized the truth of Victoria’s remarks, although he had no intention of acknowledging it.

“See here,” said he, “I wish you’d stop! There is no one else in the world that I’d let say those things to me. If you were a fellow, I’d knock you down.”

“Oh no, you wouldn’t,” said Victoria, laughing good-humoredly, “for the very good reason that I should be engaged in knocking you down! You think over that mushroom plan, Peter,” she continued, as she rose from the rock upon which she had been sitting. “I must go into the house now and see what there is to be done. Come along, Sophy, and tell me how school went to-day.”

The sisters walked away together, leaving Peter to ruminate over Victoria’s remarks. He looked after them for a moment and then himself departed. He had suddenly determined to go to a certain florist who owned some large greenhouses in Fordham, and consult with him as to the best method of raising mushrooms. Perhaps it could be kept a secret from the boys at school. At any rate, the subject was worth considering.

He walked over to the village and took an electric car, which carried him in a short time almost to his destination, although it was a distance of some miles. Upon leaving the car, he had a walk of several blocks, and his way was through the most crowded street of Fordham,—the main street, in fact, upon which were most of the shops, and which at this hour of the afternoon, when the trains arrived at short intervals from Boston, was well filled with people.

Peter walked along, paying little attention to the passers-by, as his mind reviewed the late conversation with Victoria, when he was attracted by some squirrels in a cage. The cage was standing upon a barrel outside of a provision store. The store was on a corner, and the squirrels were on the side street, which was a small one.

They were skipping about in the revolving cage, engaged in an ever-failing attempt to make progress, and compelled to pursue their ceaseless round of futile activity. Peter, as he watched them, wished that he could set them free. He wondered how much the provision dealer would sell them for. Then he remembered that there was little enough money to spare, and none with which to free squirrels.

For a wonder, no one else was watching the little animals. When they had first been placed there, a small crowd had gathered daily to look at their antics; but the Fordham youth had grown accustomed to them now, and Peter was the only one who stopped. Presently, however, another boy sauntered up, and stood a little beyond Peter. He was very shabbily dressed, and Peter, who was observant, noticed that he looked hungry. Instead of watching the squirrels, he found himself watching the boy, who was quite unconscious of it.

Presently the boy put out his hand and quietly abstracted an apple from a barrel that was standing there, and dropped it into his pocket. In a moment he repeated the operation. Then he moved slightly, and his gaze encountered Peter’s. Instantly his fist doubled up.

“If you’re going to tell on me, I’ll knock you down,” he said.

“I’m not going to tell on you, though I’m not afraid of your knocking me down,” returned Peter. “But what are you doing it for? It seems to me it’s a pretty mean thing to do.”

“I guess you’d do it if you was as hungry as me,” said the boy. “I mean to take another—there ain’t nobody looking.”

“Oh, I say, don’t!” said Peter. “Haven’t you got any money to pay for them?”

“Money! I ain’t seen a nickel for a week, and I ain’t had nothin’ to eat since yesterday morning.”

Peter put his hand in his pocket.

“I haven’t got much myself,” said he, pulling out a dime, a five-cent piece, and some pennies, which he placed in the palm of one hand while he searched the depths of his pockets with the other. “We haven’t got much money ourselves, nowadays, but we’ve got enough to eat. It must be pretty bad to be hungry. I’ve got to keep five cents to get back to Fordham Falls, but I’d be glad if you’d take the rest, and I wish you’d go in and pay for those apples.”

He placed the money upon the top of the barrel which held the squirrels’ cage, and walked quickly away. The boy looked after him in astonishment. Then he took the money and went into the store with the apples which he had appropriated in his hand. He paid for them, and also for a loaf of bread, and then he hurried up the main street in the direction in which Peter had walked. He could not overtake him, however, and when he had reached the less thickly populated part of the town and still saw nothing of his benefactor, he turned aside into a narrow road, and sitting down, he began to devour the bread and apples, from time to time looking, as he ate, at the eight cents which remained of what Peter had given him. He felt like a millionaire.

In the meantime Peter went to the florist’s, and fortunately finding him at home, proceeded to question him closely on the subject for which he had come. After spending a half-hour in interesting conversation he left the place, and as it was yet too early for his car back to Fordham Falls, he took a roundabout way for the sake of using up his superfluous time.

As he walked he thought he heard the cry of an animal in pain. Peter was passionately fond of living creatures, be they insects, birds, or beasts, and the sound that he heard was undoubtedly the yelp of a suffering dog. He ran in the direction from which it proceeded, and very soon, upon turning a corner in the road, came upon two boys who were engaged in torturing a dog which they had tied to the fence rail.

Before they knew what had happened, one boy was rolling in the ditch by the side of the road, and the other was being pommelled and shaken by an infuriated person, who had apparently sprung out of the ground, so unexpectedly had his presence become known to them.

At first the surprise completely paralyzed the boys, one of whom was larger than Peter, the other smaller; but they soon recovered themselves, and it would undoubtedly have gone hard with the aggressor had he not been suddenly reinforced by help from the most unlooked-for quarter.

The boy whom Peter had met in front of the provision store, had been eating his bread and apples not far from the scene of the fight. Hearing the sound of a scuffle, he ran down the road, and saw at once that his late benefactor was evidently getting the worst of it. Gratitude, added to the food which Peter had given him, gave strength to the newcomer, and in a few moments the victory was won.

The two young ruffians were prostrate in the road, and Peter walked away with the injured dog in his arms, accompanied by his new friend.

CHAPTER VI.

PETER’S NEW ACQUAINTANCES.

WHEN Victoria and Sophy reached the house after their conversation with Peter, they found Honor and Katherine still struggling with the parlor curtains. Two windows were finished, and Katherine was in the act of mounting the step-ladder at the third, when her younger sisters appeared. At the same moment Blanch thrust her head in the doorway at the back of the hall.

“I forgot to tell yers,” said she, “there ain’t no bread in the house for supper.”

“Oh, Blanch!” cried Honor, turning to look at her, while she steadied the ladder. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“I never thought of it. I thought yers’d know it yerselves.”

“How could we know it? I can’t spend all my time looking into the bread-box, and I had no idea the last baking would have given out so soon. You will have to make some biscuits or some corn bread.”

“I ain’t never made any. Of course I know how to make ’em, but as I ain’t never made any, yers mightn’t like ’em.”

“Very well,” replied Honor, with as much majesty of demeanor as she could assume when embracing a step-ladder. “I will show you how presently.”

Though Honor was not as tall as Katherine, and was very slight, she could be extremely dignified when she chose.

Blanch’s head disappeared, and the door closed with a bang.

“Why, Honor, do you know how yourself?” asked Victoria.

“No, I haven’t the least idea, but I’m not going to tell her so. I will look it up in the recipe book. It is a curious thing about B. Lafferty. She never will acknowledge that she can’t do a thing. She is the most conceited person, as well as the most aggravating, that I ever met.”

Katherine at the top of the ladder laughed as she adjusted the curtain.

“You must be taking lessons from her,” she said, “telling her that you would show her how to make biscuits. I wonder what they will be like! It is bad enough to have had to give up dining late to suit Miss B. Lafferty’s fancies, without having to go without bread for supper.”

“You take my place at the ladder, Vic,” said Honor, with the air of one who had determined to defy fate, “and I will find the recipe book and make the biscuits!”

“How did school go to-day?” asked Victoria, when Honor had left them.

“Oh, beautifully! Minnie Chase pinched Bertha Hickens, which naturally had the effect of making Bertha howl loudly, and that frightened Carry Deane so badly that she began to cry, which so affected Tommy Deane that he began to cry, and presently the whole school was weeping and in an uproar. Lessons had to be stopped for at least twenty minutes while Honor and I wiped eyes and patted shoulders and scolded Minnie for being the cause of it all. Oh, it went beautifully! Another tack please, Vic, and a good big one. There, that is the last! Dear me,” continued Katherine, standing in the middle of the room and looking about her, “they don’t look as they ought to, but I can’t help it! Honor won’t have the man from Fordham, so we shall have to go with crooked curtains. I must rush now, for I have a music lesson to give. I would so much rather stay at home and practise!”

Honor had been wrestling with her recipe books and her biscuits for more than an hour, Katherine had given her music lesson and returned, and Victoria, aided by Sophy,—who was perhaps more of a hindrance than a help, but whom it pleased to be called into service,—had performed various household duties, and still Peter did not come back.

It was no unusual matter for him to be off in the woods and meadows for hours at a time, and therefore his sisters were not in the least alarmed by his absence, especially as Victoria suspected that he had acted upon her suggestion and had gone to consult the Fordham florist.

When the clock struck six, however, and he had not yet come, they began to wonder as to his whereabouts, and Sophy went to one of the second-story windows and took up her station there. The sun had set, but a young moon was shining brightly, and she could see plainly the beautiful lawn, dotted with the fine old trees now quite bare of leaves, across which Peter might be expected to come if he had gone to Fordham by the electric car, as Victoria supposed.

Sophy watched for some time in silence, but at last her scrutiny was rewarded.

“Here he comes,” she cried, “and he is carrying something, and there’s somebody with him! Who do you s’pose it is? It is a boy, and he looks raggedy, and it’s a dog! I really think it’s a truly dog! Vic, where are you?”

Sophy, in great excitement, ran from her post of observation and hurried down the stairs. The front door was thrown open, and Peter entered, tenderly carrying a good-sized yellow dog, whose leg was bound up and whose head lay limply upon his arm, and accompanied by a boy who, as Sophy had said, was “raggedy.”

The four sisters gathered from different parts of the house and surveyed the newcomers, surprise mingled with disapprobation being unmistakably depicted on the countenances of all, with the exception, perhaps, of Sophy’s.

“I want some witch hazel,” said Peter, “and some kind of an ointment or something. Vic, get it for me, will you? This dog’s leg is broken, and he has a lot of wounds. This is Dave Carney. He’s going to stay to tea.”

“Peter!” said four voices.

“Well,” said he, “what’s the matter?”

“You look exactly as if you had been in a fight.”

“So I have.”

“Oh, Peter! But are you—are you going to fix the dog’s leg here?”

“Oh, I’ll take him down to the barn, if you like. I suppose you will all make a terrible fuss, if I don’t. Isn’t he a nice dog? Some fellows were hurting him, but we floored ’em, Carney and I.”

Carney, in the meantime, had retired to the least conspicuous position that he could find. He stood far back by the door, and he twirled his shabby cap in his hand, looking the while as though he would prefer to be in any place but that in which he found himself.

Honor and Victoria, who were on the broad staircase, turned towards one another. Honor’s pretty eyebrows were drawn together in a frown, and her face said as plainly as though she had spoken, “What are we to do about it?”

“I will get the witch hazel,” said Victoria, aloud, “and will bring it down to the barn. You and—and your friend had better take the dog down there now, Peter, and make a bed for him.”

“Bring some old rags,” commanded Peter, “and something nice and soft for him to lie on. This would do,” he added, picking up a white chudda shawl which hung over the back of one of the hall chairs.

“My best white shawl!” cried Katherine, springing forward just in time to rescue it before it was wrapped about the suffering animal. “What are you thinking of, Peter? Do take that dirty dog out of the house! I never saw such a boy.”

Victoria, as she hurried up the stairs, sighed to herself.

“Oh, dear!” she thought. “I am afraid Katherine will say just the wrong thing, and before we know it Peter will insist upon keeping the dog in the house, and having the boy at the supper-table. Where did he pick them up?”

But Peter, whatever may have been his first impulse, decided that, after all, it would be the wiser course to repair to the barn, and here Victoria found him with his new friend, when she and Sophy followed with the remedies.

The dog was, without doubt, very much hurt; but he seemed to appreciate all that was being done for him, and he looked lovingly at Peter as he bathed his wounds and bound up his leg.

“How would you like to have your supper out here, Peter?” said Victoria, who had been pondering the situation. “Then you could stay near the dog and see that he is all right.”

“Well,” said Peter, slowly, “I don’t know but it would be a good plan. What do you say, Carney?”

But Carney was too bashful to speak.

It was a happy solution of the difficulty, and Victoria and Sophy hurried back to the house, and had soon packed a basket for the picnic in the barn. Honor’s biscuits, made so early in the afternoon, had risen and fallen again long since, and were now little lumps of hard and sodden dough; but the sisters thought that the boys would doubtless enjoy them, and they bestowed them with a generous hand.

“We can eat crackers ourselves,” said Katherine. “I don’t want to hurt your feelings, Honor, but—but—do look in the bread-box to-morrow, please!”

Honor had seated herself in her place at the head of the table. The old silver service and the delicate cups and saucers gleamed in the light which fell from the candles. The table was covered with a cloth of the finest damask, a silver jardinière of ferns ornamented the centre, and at the four corners stood tall silver candlesticks of massive design. No one would ever have dreamed that the family who were to gather about this table had not all the money they needed.

The eldest sister leaned back in her chair and sighed.

“It is perfectly dreadful,” she exclaimed, “that I don’t know the first thing about cooking! What am I to do? I went into the kitchen determined that that odious B. Lafferty should never suspect that I hadn’t made biscuits every day of my life, but I couldn’t have impressed her that way, for she stood looking at me with the most supercilious expression. She insisted upon taking the dough and the roller right out of my hands. She declared that she knew better than I did about making them, and the worst of it was, I didn’t know whether she did or not, and these are the result. Hear them!”

Honor lifted one of the biscuits and let it drop upon the table. It sounded like the fall of a little stone.

“You will have to take cooking lessons,” said Katherine. “They don’t really cost much, and it would pay in the end.”

“They may not cost much, but when we have scarcely a cent in our pockets and owe bills, we can’t afford lessons in anything. No, I shall have to keep a sharp lookout on the bread-box, and trust to luck about other things. I am afraid she only knows how to make two puddings, for when I speak about the dessert, there is always some reason why it must be either cornstarch or tapioca. I am perfectly certain they are the only kinds she can make.”

“Why not give up having dessert?” suggested Victoria, as she adjusted the cover of the basket. “It would save a little money.”

“Victoria!” exclaimed her sisters together.

“We are coming down pretty low, if we can’t have dessert,” said Katherine. “What are you thinking of?”

“Only of saving money; and a lamp on the supper table would be cheaper than candles,” said Vic, as she took up the basket and left the room. “Come, Sophy. You carry the pitcher of milk. Don’t spill it, child.”

“I don’t know where Vic gets those scrimpy ideas,” said Katherine, when they had gone. “She actually said again to-day that she thought we could do without salad, that the sweet oil for the dressing was so expensive; and when we went to Boston together the other day, she insisted upon walking all the way from the station to Aunt Sophia’s, just to save five cents! She was perfectly horrified at my getting those embroidered handkerchiefs, and yet they were so cheap. It is a perfect bore to have her so.”

Honor said nothing. She thought that Victoria went to an extreme, perhaps; but it was better for the family purse than Katherine’s course, and the suggestion about the candles contained a good deal of common sense. A lamp would do just as well, and candles were expensive; but then they made the table look so much prettier. How provoking it was, thought Honor, to be obliged to do without so small and simple a luxury as candles on the supper-table!

With an air of resignation, she rose and lighted a lamp, which she placed upon the table. Then she blew out the candles, and removed them to the mantelpiece.

“Oh, Honor!” cried Katherine. “Why do you do that? You are getting to be as bad as Vic herself. You might at least leave them on the table unlighted.”

“For the mere show of them?” said Honor. “Never! and Vic is right. Candles are expensive. I wonder if there is anything else we can give up.”

And she looked about with a gesture of despair.

“Sugar in our tea, I suppose,” said Katherine, with what she considered fine sarcasm, “or even tea itself. Perhaps you would like to do without forks. We can sell the silver, for instance. For my part, I shall never give in to this stingy spirit that is taking possession of the rest of you. I am sure we are not as poor as all that, and we are certainly making money.”

Honor made no reply. When Katherine talked in this strain, it was useless to argue with her, and presently Victoria and Sophy returned, and they took their places at the table.

Dave Carney spent some time with Peter in the barn, and when he left, he promised to return the next day, and see how the dog was progressing. When Peter asked him where he lived, he returned an evasive answer. The two boys, so differently placed in the world, found that they had much in common. Dave knew almost as much as Peter did about the ways of animals and birds, and was deeply interested in all that his new friend had to say upon the subject, besides recounting many of his own experiences in the woods.

When he came the next day, he offered to help Peter with his mushrooms, and in return for this Peter, at Victoria’s suggestion, presented him with a full suit of outgrown clothes which fitted him exactly; for although he was older than Peter, he was of slighter build and was shorter. Peter superintended his toilet when he tried on the garments at the barn, fastening his collar for him, and even tying a blue cravat about his neck. Finally he placed a brown cap upon his head.

“There,” said he, “you look like a regular dude.”

Dave surveyed himself in the little mirror and then glanced at his nice trousers and whole shoes. A pleased smile stole over his face, and then he looked at Peter.

“I’ll never forgit it,” said he.

It was finally arranged that Carney should come to Glen Arden every day to do whatever came to hand, in return for his three meals and a small sum weekly. He was to take part in the mushroom culture and to assist Victoria with her violets, and also to carry coal for B. Lafferty. Even Honor, who had at first disapproved of this arrangement, found him useful in many different ways. He was always ready to go to the village upon an errand, or to make himself useful about the house. In fact, Dave Carney soon came to be regarded as an important and indispensable member of the family, and as he ate with Blanch in the kitchen, that difficulty no longer existed.

Peter told no one, not even Victoria, of the incident which led to his acquaintance with Carney, and the boy knew this, and his gratitude increased tenfold.

Peter made two warm friends that day. The dog soon recovered, and his devotion to the boy who had saved his life was touching in the extreme. When Peter was at home he never left him, and when he was at school he wandered disconsolately about the house or place, taking up his position at the head of the avenue when the time approached for his master to return, and rushing to meet him when he appeared in the distance.

Since his recovery and owing to the numerous baths which Peter and Carney gave him he had so far improved in appearance that the sisters consented to his presence in the house; and they soon became greatly attached to him, although he paid but little attention to any one but his master. He was not a handsome dog, being tall and ungainly, with a coat of yellowish bristly hair. He was unmistakably a mongrel, and perhaps for that very reason was unusually intelligent. He knew each one of the family by name almost immediately, and seemed to understand everything that was said to him. Victoria declared that he was the brightest of the Starrs, and hence came his name.

There was great discussion upon this point, and for days the newcomer went unchristened. Apparently he had never had a name before, for although they tried every title by which a dog could possibly be known, he failed to respond, and only smiled roguishly at their efforts, for he was a happy-hearted dog with a most cheerful smile. Nothing that was suggested satisfied the critical Peter. Finally Honor said, “He will just have to go without a name. He will have to be known as the Starr dog.”

“Or the dog Starr,” said Victoria, quickly. “Do you see? The dog-star! By the way, what is the name of the dog-star. Let us look it up in the Encyclopædia.”

They did so, and found that it was “Sirius,” and also that Sirius was the brightest of the fixed stars.

“And this is the brightest of these Starrs,” cried Victoria, as she hugged the long-suffering but none the less fortunate animal. “Do, Peter, name him Sirius!”

And for a wonder Peter consented; and although “Sirius” was a difficult name to call when one was in a hurry, for instance, it was such an appropriate title that no one objected.

In the meantime the month of November drew to a close, and on the first day of December the amount of mail for the family at Glen Arden was unusually large. There was the grocer’s bill, and the butcher’s bill, and there were other household accounts; but in addition to these there was the one from the school-furniture store in Boston. It was addressed to Honor, and with an exclamation of dismay she glanced at the amount. Fifty-five dollars and eighty cents!

“Oh, Katherine!” she said, looking at her sister, and letting the bill fall into her lap.

“What is the matter?” asked Katherine. “You look as if you had seen a ghost.”

“I have,” said Honor, solemnly. “This is the bill for the schoolroom furniture.”

“Well, you expected it, didn’t you? How much is it?”

“Fifty-five dollars and eighty cents!”

“I am sure that isn’t very much,” returned Katherine, easily. “Scarcely more than fifty dollars.”

“But we haven’t got it. How are we going to pay for it, and why did you get all these things?” groaned Honor, as she looked at the items. “Five dollars for the globe, and we could easily have done without it, or used a little cheap one. Five dollars for the blackboard! And all this for copy-books and blank-books! You ought never to have bought them, and if you did, you oughtn’t to have had them charged. And have you begun to make any money with your typewriter yet?”

Katherine did not reply.

“Have you even learned to use it yet? Have you done anything with it? The money you spent on that typewriter might just as well have been thrown into the river. Katherine, Katherine, how could you do it! I verily believe we shall have to apply to Aunt Sophia for help.”

Katherine sprang from her seat.

“Never!” she said. “Honor, you are too absurd. I tell you, we are making money with the school and the music scholars. As for the typewriter, you are too disagreeable! Of course it will pay in time. I—I haven’t had time to learn to use it yet.”

She dared not add that her ardor had been somewhat lessened by a small paragraph which she had chanced to see in the newspaper. It was to the effect that the use of the typewriter unfitted the fingers for the piano, that they were apt to become stiff and to lose their accustomed skill. It was only a newspaper paragraph, to be sure, but it had frightened Katherine. She even acknowledged to herself that she regretted her purchase, but she had no intention of making this known to her sisters.

And in the meantime, how should the bills be paid?

CHAPTER VII.

VICTORIA GOES IN SEARCH OF FUNDS.

HONOR thought over the subject during the day and decided that they must hold a council of war. Some means must be decided upon for paying the bills. It was precisely one month since they had undertaken to support themselves, and already they were in difficulty. It would be humiliating to be forced to appeal so soon to Mr. Abbott for help, and yet they would far rather ask him than their Aunt Sophia. But perhaps there was some other way.

The school bills had been sent out,—they were issued in advance,—but as yet there had been no response, and even when there was, the amount would help very little. Six children at twenty dollars each for the term, one hundred and twenty dollars. The household bills for the month of November amounted to what seemed a large sum in these straitened times,—and they did not include the one for the school furniture,—and the money which they should receive from the pupils would be for the next four months.

There were the music scholars, to be sure, but they were but five, and Katherine received only fifty cents an hour. Mushrooms and violets, though a paying industry in theory, had not yet begun to show practical results. Six hundred dollars a year came to them, as they supposed, from their father’s estate, and there were five persons to be clothed and fed. Had they been foolish, after all, not to accept their aunt’s offer? Honor, sitting in the western window of the parlor that afternoon in December, while she waited for her sisters to join her there, wondered if they had made a mistake.

There had been a light fall of snow that day, just enough to whiten the ground and to rest lightly upon the branches of the cedar trees. The sun was shining now, shortly before setting, and the world looked very beautiful. But Honor was in no mood to enjoy the prospect. She felt an overburdening sense of responsibility. She was the eldest, the family were practically left in her care, and she missed her father more than words could express. Was she doing right to refuse the help which her father’s sister had offered?

Presently the front door opened, and Victoria walked in. She was singing, to a tune of her own invention, her favorite quotation from Shakespeare:

“Jog on, jog on the footpath way,

And merrily hent the stile—a.

A merry heart goes all the way,

Your sad tires in a mile—a.”

She was about to begin it for the second time, when she saw Honor sitting on the sofa in the bay-window. Her very attitude appeared depressed, for she was leaning her head on her hand, as her elbow rested on the back of the sofa, and she idly swung one foot to and fro.

“It is just perfect out,” said Victoria, coming into the room. A bright color glowed in her cheeks, and her voice was gay and exhilarated from her walk in the fresh air. “It is growing colder, and there is a snap about everything. Have you been out, Honor?”

“No.”

“Not all day? Oh, put on your things and come out for a walk! It is just the afternoon for it.”

“No,” said Honor, “I am waiting for you and Katherine. I don’t know where she can be.”

“What do you want us for?” asked Victoria, feeling a pang of something like depression, her sister’s tone was so dreary.

“I want to talk things over, and here comes Katherine at last. I thought you were never coming. Where have you been, Katherine? Indeed, somebody must suggest some way of getting money at once. Those bills are weighing upon me.”

“There is a way,” said Victoria, taking the other corner of the sofa, while Katherine threw herself into an arm-chair. “There is a way, but I suppose you will both be perfectly horrified if I even suggest it.”

“What is it?” asked her sisters.

“Will you promise not to exclaim?”

“It couldn’t possibly surprise us after your other suggestions,” remarked Katherine, gloomily. “I shall be quite resigned, even if you tell us we are to live on bread and water and wear ready-made clothes at five dollars a suit.”

“We might do worse,” said Victoria, “but this is quite different. We have so many things” (she looked about the room as she spoke), “why—indeed, girls, I scarcely dare say it—why can’t we sell something?”

There was a moment of silence. Honor was the first to find her voice.

“Sell something!” she exclaimed. “Sell what?”

“Oh, a picture or two, or some books, or a piece of silver. Or isn’t there any jewelry?”

“Why, Victoria, you can’t really mean it?” cried Katherine, in an incredulous voice. “I can’t think that you really mean it.”

“Sell our family heirlooms?” exclaimed Honor, starting to her feet and gazing at her younger sister with the air of a tragedy queen. “Sell the books and the pictures that father collected with so much pride? Sell the silver which belonged to our great-great-grandmother? Victoria, are you perfectly crazy?”

“No,” said Victoria, stoutly, “not at all so, but I knew you would take it in that way. Of course, I don’t mean the family things, but I mean some of the books, or those etchings that are in the portfolio. I know well enough how dearly father loved them, but he certainly loved us more, and if he were here now and knew how poor we are, he would be the first to say that we must do something to get money, and that we had better sell such useless things as those etchings are. They don’t do us any good, for we never look at them, and he would far rather have us sell them than owe money. You know father had a perfect horror of unpaid bills.”

Victoria spoke rapidly, for she had become excited. The opposition manifested by her sisters only served to strengthen her belief in the common sense of her suggestion, and she felt confident that her plan was a good one.

“I was wondering if Aunt Sophia wouldn’t buy something of us.”

“Victoria!!”

“Well, you needn’t be so shocked. Aunt Sophia with all her aggravatingness is very kind-hearted, and she is fond of us in a way. She might buy something of us, and when we grow rich we could buy it back again.”

“When we do!” said Katherine, with fine sarcasm. “All I can say is that if Aunt Sophia is to be applied to, I shall have nothing to do with it. Victoria can run the affair herself.”

“Very well,” returned Victoria, “if Honor is willing, I will. I will go to town to-morrow, and see Aunt Sophia. I only wish Mr. Abbott were at home, but he said his business would keep him away two weeks. Shall I go, Honor?”

“I suppose so,” said Honor, drearily. “I have nothing more to say.”

“To-night we can talk over what we had better offer for sale,” continued Victoria. “I think it will be quite good fun, girls.”

“It is not my idea of fun,” said Honor, “but I am willing to do almost anything for a little money. How little we supposed this time last year that we should ever be in such need! It just shows that we can’t be sure of anything.”

“By the way,” said Victoria, abruptly changing the subject, “did you know that the house on the hill has been taken?”

“One of my scholars said something about it to-day,” said Katherine. “She said their name was Madison, and there are a girl and a boy, I believe. I wonder if they are nice.”

“I hope so, as they are to be such near neighbors.”

“That won’t make any difference,” remarked Honor, “for we shall see nothing of them. We have no time to make new acquaintances and we are too poor. If they have taken the house on the hill, they must be very well off, and that is all the more reason for us to avoid them. We are nothing but paupers, working for our living.”

“Honor, how morbid you are getting on that subject!” cried Victoria, while Katherine laughed somewhat bitterly. “If they are nice, I shall be glad to know them, and so will you. Do cheer up a bit,” she added, rising as she spoke. “I am going to find Peter now and see how they are progressing with the mushroom bed. Don’t worry, Honor. It will all come right some day.

“Jog on, jog on the footpath way,

And merrily hent the stile—a.’”

The sisters heard the fresh young voice as Victoria, having put on her jacket again, departed in search of Peter. Katherine seated herself at the piano, as she was apt to do when under any stress of emotion, and Honor went to her own room. She was determined that no one should see her cry if she could help it, but life was at present very disheartening, let Victoria suggest and sing as she would.

Vic on her way to the barn met Sophy, and together they sought their brother. They found him sitting with Dave Carney in the harness-room.

“Oh, come along in,” said he with unexpected cordiality, while Carney rose from the box upon which he was seated, and Sirius rapped a welcome on the floor with his long tail. The oddest part of Sirius’s somewhat grotesque appearance was the great length of his tail.

“We were just talking about the mushroom bed, and we can’t decide whether to have it in the cellar, or in the shed, or in the barn, or out of doors. Of course you don’t really know any more about it, Vic, than I do, but what do you think?”

“Did you send for the books?” asked his sister, as she seated herself.

“Yes, and they came by the noon mail. A lot about edible mushrooms, and here it tells how to raise them,” said Peter, giving her two or three pamphlets which he had been studying.

He had, upon the suggestion of the florist at Fordham, sent to Washington for these pamphlets, which were printed and published by the Department of Agriculture.

“I really believe it is going to be a good thing, Vic. They seem easy to raise, and I shouldn’t wonder if there was money in them. We might live on them ourselves, and save butcher’s bills. You know the Chinese eat them a lot.”

“Yes, I know,” responded Victoria, although somewhat doubtfully; “but then it always seems as if the Chinese ate such queer things—mice, for instance. I don’t think I should like to copy the Chinese.”

“Pooh! You don’t really believe that they eat mice, do you?” said Peter, with lofty scorn. “A lot is made up about the Chinese, because we don’t really know much about them. But they do a large business in mushrooms, or ‘edible fungi,’ as they are called. They import them from Japan and Tahiti, and even from Australia and New Zealand. They make soup out of fungus in China; and do you know in New Zealand they eat a fungus that grows out of the body of a big caterpillar.”

“Oh, horrible!” cried Victoria. “Sophy’s eyes look as big as saucers. Don’t tell any more such dreadful tales, Peter. We won’t raise that kind, at any rate. Have you decided where to have the beds?”

“That’s just what we were talking about before you came out. I was thinking of the shed at the back of the barn, and Carney thinks that would be a good place. I don’t believe out of doors will do in our climate; and Smith, the man at Fordham, said the shed was the best. I wish we could make a regular mushroom house, like the ones they show pictures of in these pamphlets, but I suppose it would cost a good deal.”

“We had better wait until next year for that,” said the practical Victoria. “Then we can tell whether they are going to pay or not.”

They discussed the matter for some time, until the gathering darkness warned Victoria that it was time for her and Sophy to go back to the house; and they left the boys still absorbed in the subject.

The next day was Saturday, and it was decided to make use of the holiday by arranging the mushroom bed. The boys followed closely the directions for doing this, which were given in their pamphlets; but after making the bed, they were forced to wait for a few days before introducing the seed, or spawn, until the temperature of the bed should have reached the proper degree. This they were to discover by means of the ground thermometer which Peter had purchased.

The day being Saturday, Victoria was free to go to Boston to call upon her aunt. The girls had further discussed the matter the evening before, and had decided that Victoria’s plan must be followed, if they wished to avert the ruin which seemed to be staring them in the face. If Aunt Sophia declined to buy the pictures which they had determined to sell, they must be disposed of in some other way. Victoria had a private plan of her own for raising some ready money, but of this she had said nothing to her sisters.

She went to Boston in one of the early trains with a large flat package under her arm, and a small but heavy one in her pocket. The day was a fine one, and the streets were filled with Christmas shoppers, the stores being already crowded, early in the morning though it was.

Victoria walked quickly from the station to her aunt’s house. The world seemed very bright this morning, even though bills were unpaid and prospects dreary. As the young girl hurried along, one might easily have imagined from her happy face and her well-dressed figure that she was in the most comfortable circumstances possible, and that her package was a Christmas present which she had purchased, instead of being four of her father’s precious etchings with which the sisters, after much hesitation and disinclination, had decided to part.

“I wonder what kind of a person I am,” thought Victoria as she walked. “I wonder what sort of a character I really have. I don’t seem to get as gloomy as Honor or as furious as Katherine over being poor. Does it mean that I don’t realize as they do how very bad things are? It always seems as if there must be some way out, no matter how gloomy and awful things may look. Perhaps I’m rather shallow and can’t grasp the situation. Some day when I have time I am going to sit down and study my own nature, but there are ever so many things that must be done first. And after all, it doesn’t seem worth while to waste time over that. I might find out that I was absolutely worthless, and that would be so discouraging. I suppose a great many people would say that I ought to examine myself more, and correct my faults, and all that, and I suppose I ought; but if I did I know I should get depressed, and it really seems as if one of us should try to keep bright and cheerful, and I seem to be the one that it comes easiest to. I wish I had some one to ask about such things—a mother, for instance. Holloa, here I am at Aunt Sophia’s already. I hope she is at home.”

But inquiry proved that already Mrs. Wentworth Ward had gone out. She would not return until five o’clock that afternoon, the maid said. She had gone to Providence to attend a meeting. Would not Miss Victoria come in and rest a bit?

But Victoria declined the invitation. She had quickly determined to put her other plans into action, and no time should be lost.

It did not take long to reach a certain silversmith’s of whom she had heard, and whom she knew to be honest, although his shop was neither large nor fashionable. Fortunately no customers were in the store, and the proprietor could attend to her himself. She produced the small heavy package from her pocket, and proceeded to untie it. In it were a pair of old-fashioned gold earrings, a watch and chain, and one or two chased rings. These articles had been left to Victoria by the will of her grandmother. The watch, which was very old, and had long since ceased to go, was of no great value as a timepiece, she supposed.

“I want to sell these things,” said she, bravely. “Will you buy them?”

The old man, who had kind eyes, Victoria thought, looked at them critically. Then he glanced benignly at the owner of the trinkets.

“Do you really want to sell them?” said he.

“Yes, I really do,” returned Victoria. “I need the money. How much will you give me for them?”

“I can’t tell that until I’ve taken them apart and weighed the gold. Come back next week, and I’ll tell you.”

“Next week!” cried Victoria. “Oh, can’t you do it now? I do want to take the money home to-day.”

“And ain’t you going to buy Christmas presents with it?” asked the old man.

“No indeed, I’m not. We really need the money. Couldn’t you tell me if I were to come back this afternoon? At three o’clock, for instance?”

“Very well. Come in at three, and I’ll try to have them weighed before that. These earrings are hollow, I guess, and there ain’t so very much gold in this open-faced watch. Here’s a receipt.”

He scrawled something on a bit of paper which he gave to Victoria, and she thanked him and left the shop. She then took her way to a picture store. It was a large one that was much frequented, and it required some determination on her part to go in and display her wares. The clerks were such fashionably dressed young men that she felt somewhat in awe of them, and they all appeared to be so busy that it was long before she was noticed at all.

At last, however, one of them stepped up to her and asked her what she wished. For a moment Victoria could not find her voice, and when she finally spoke it was so low and trembling that the clerk could not understand her.

“You wish to look at etchings?” said he. “Right over here, please. Summers, show this young lady some etchings. I have another customer.” And he turned to a gentleman who was looking at some pictures with the air of intending to buy one if not more.

“Oh, no,” said Victoria. “You have made a mistake. I don’t want to look at etchings. I want to sell those I have here. I thought that—that perhaps—you would buy them.”

Her voice was now perfectly audible. In her effort to make herself understood it reached farther than she intended. The two clerks and the gentleman who stood there all turned and looked at Victoria, and she with her package under her arm felt as though she should like to sink through the floor and disappear forever from their sight.

CHAPTER VIII.

UNEXPECTED GENEROSITY.

BUT this was no time in which to give way to embarrassment. Having undertaken the expedition in search of funds, Victoria felt that she must carry it bravely through, come what would. With fingers that trembled conspicuously she untied the cord and removed the wrappings, and presently disclosed to the view of the three men four etchings of such rare merit that they exclaimed with admiration.

“Ah, artist’s proofs!” said the gentleman who had been looking at pictures. “And a signature worth having,” he added, as he glanced at the name written beneath the etching he held in his hand. “May I ask what the price of this one is?”

“I—I don’t exactly know,” faltered Victoria. “I thought they could tell me here what they are worth. You see my father bought them and—”

She stopped abruptly. She did not wish to take these strangers into her confidence, but the three men saw her black dress and imagined the rest. And yet she did not look as if she were in need of money.

“I should think they were worth twenty-five dollars apiece, should not you?” said the gentleman, turning to the clerks.

They were unwilling to mention any price, and one of them went in search of the owner of the store. Victoria could scarcely repress a little gasp of surprise. She had no idea that the pictures were worth so much, for they were small ones. If she succeeded in selling all of them in addition to the gold which she had left with the jeweller, she would go home with a large fortune in her pocket, and the unpaid bills could be settled at once.

She glanced at the young man, who appeared to be absorbed in examination of the etchings while he waited to hear their value. He was very tall and slight, with straight features, and neither beard nor moustache, which made him look younger than perhaps he really was. Victoria decided that he was nice looking, and was probably about twenty-five. He seemed to be well known at the shop, for the clerks treated him with marked attention and called him by name, but Victoria could not hear it distinctly enough to know what it was.

Again she told herself that he was very nice looking, and that he had the most charming manners she had ever seen, though perhaps she was influenced by his interest in her pictures and his evident desire to buy one. Presently the picture-dealer himself came forward and examined critically the four etchings.

“They are genuine artist’s proofs,” said he, “and I shall try to sell them myself at twenty dollars each. Probably they cost more than that, but in the present state of business they will not bring as much as they did. I will give you fifteen apiece for them and take the four.”

“And I will give you twenty-five for this one,” said the young man, holding up the one that he had first looked at. “It is a gem, and I will get you to frame it for me,” he added, turning to the dealer. “Do it for me as soon as you can, for I want to give it away for a Christmas present.”

He took out a roll of bills from his pocket, and counting out twenty-five dollars he handed the money to Victoria, taking off his hat as he did so.

“Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity of securing such a prize,” he said.

Victoria hesitated and blushed scarlet.

“I don’t exactly like to take it,” she said simply, as she looked up at him. “You are giving me too much. You could buy it of the shop for twenty dollars. Please don’t give me more than that.”

“I prefer to pay five dollars more for the privilege of—of having first choice,” he said, abruptly changing the termination of his sentence.

Victoria said no more, but took the money, and at the same time one of the clerks brought her forty-five dollars for the remaining three. She thanked them all and hurried from the shop.

“Rather an odd case,” said the picture-dealer to the young man. “The man who bought those etchings in the first place knew what he was about. I daresay I shan’t sell them, but I didn’t want to let such good things go; and besides, she seemed like a nice little girl. I have a daughter just about her age and—well, no matter. Now, sir, what kind of a frame do you wish, and how about those other pictures you were looking at?”

The young man turned to look at samples of frames, but his mind was more occupied with the incident which had just taken place than with his purchases. He, too, felt sorry for the girl. She was unmistakably a lady, and it must have been a trying position for her. He would not care to have his sister in such a predicament, he said to himself.

He was a man of somewhat old-fashioned notions, one who believed that the men of the family should take care of the women. He wondered if there was no one to look out for this young girl, who seemed to be not more than fifteen,—no older person who could have come with her. Then dismissing the subject from his thoughts for the time being, he devoted his whole attention to the choice of a frame.

Victoria, when she left the shop, felt that all their difficulties were at an end. She had a roll of bills in her pocket,—she put her hand in more than once as she walked, to make sure that the money was safe,—and if all went as smoothly as she hoped, she would have more before the day was over. She had left home that morning with her railroad ticket and twenty-five cents for emergencies; she expected to return in affluence, and it had all been done without the intervention of Aunt Sophia. How fortunate it was that Aunt Sophia had elected to go to Providence on this day of all others! What would she say to such a proceeding if she ever happened to hear of it?

Victoria smiled to herself at the idea. Very probably Aunt Sophia dealt at that picture store herself. How little the dealer suspected that she was the niece of Mrs. Wentworth Ward of Beacon Street,—or the young man who had given her twenty-five dollars. Then in a flash the other side of the occurrence presented itself. Should she have taken so much from him? Was the etching worth that much? Why should she have calmly allowed herself to accept twenty-five dollars from him and only fifteen from the dealer? Had she made herself an object of charity?

She had walked across the Common, and was about to cross Tremont Street when she reached this point in her reflections, and so absorbed was she in the subject that she barely escaped being run over by one of the innumerable electric cars which were passing in long succession, interspersed with dashing herdics and hurrying cabs. All the world seemed to be in haste this sharp winter morning, and a motorman shouted angrily to her as she attempted to cross in front of his car.

She reached the other side of the street in safety, and then she wondered what she should do next. She had no Christmas shopping to consume her time, for their gifts to one another were to be very simple this year and were to be made at home. The stores on Temple Place were packed with people, and as she walked she was jostled and almost bruised by the inevitable handbags, without which Boston shoppers are rarely seen. It was now only half-past ten, and she must stay in town until after three, the hour of her appointment with the jeweller. She determined to go back to her aunt’s, and remain there until the afternoon, and there she could think quietly of the events of the morning.

She did this, and was shown by the maid into the library and told to make herself at home. Although Mrs. Wentworth Ward was their own aunt, the Starrs had never felt for her the affection which is so common in that relationship. It had always been more or less of an effort for them to go to her house, and their calls there were unmistakably “duty visits.” Mrs. Ward was without doubt very trying at times, and the girls were in her opinion absurdly independent.

There were faults on both sides, perhaps, as there usually are in such cases. Victoria, sitting in the luxurious library, thought it all over.

“If Aunt Sophia were only like some aunts,” she said to herself, “how nice it would have been to come and live with her! Think of this big house and no one in it but herself; but oh, I hope we shall never have to do it! I do wonder what the girls will say about my sales this morning. I felt exactly like a book agent or a pedler. Dear me, I only hope I shall never see that young man again! He was just as nice as he could be, but I don’t want ever to meet him! He really made me a present of ten dollars, you might say. What will Honor think of it all?”

Three o’clock came at last, and as the hands of the clock on the steeple of the Old South Church pointed to the hour, Victoria entered the shop where she had left her gold that morning. She knew little of the value of watches, but she fancied that when new they cost not less than one hundred dollars, and often very much more; therefore she hoped for at least fifty for hers. Her disappointment was consequently very great when she learned that it was worth exactly thirteen dollars and seventy-five cents, while the other trinkets would bring but seven and a half.

“The chain and the earrings are hollow,” said the man, “and the works of the watch are good for nothing. You may be glad to get this much.”

She thanked him and left the store feeling somewhat crestfallen, although twenty-one dollars and a quarter made a sum not to be despised.

The girls were eagerly awaiting her return, and when she displayed her roll of bills and informed them that she had brought them ninety-one dollars and twenty-five cents, they could scarcely believe her. Honor looked grave over the account of the young man’s generosity, as Victoria had supposed that she would, and she also expressed the hope that they might never see him again.

“It would be simply unendurable to feel that we were under obligations to him,” said she; “but it isn’t at all likely that we shall ever meet him. We don’t see many people but those who live in Fordham, and if he lived anywhere in this neighborhood, you would have known him by sight. You are sure you never saw him before, Vic?”

“Perfectly sure. He was probably some Boston swell, but he was an awfully nice one, and if it were not for that ten dollars, I should really like to know him.”

“You may as well say if it were not for that whole ninety-one dollars and twenty-five cents,” said Honor. “I am glad enough to get the money, but I can’t bear to think of your having to go to those shops by yourself and sell things. I ought to have gone with you, Vic. Indeed, I ought! It was very cowardly and selfish for me to let you go alone—a young thing like you. Some one might have been impertinent to you, and then I should never have forgiven myself.”

“Oh, nonsense, Honor!” laughed her young sister. “You are not so very much older yourself, and I went to such respectable places that of course no one would be impertinent. And, besides, I wanted to surprise you about the gold. I wanted to go alone.”

But Honor shook her head. She knew that she had been remiss, and that her father would not have approved of Victoria’s solitary expedition. If the young man whom she had met was truly a gentleman, as Vic declared that he was, what could he have thought of such a proceeding? He certainly must suppose that her relatives were very careless and very peculiar people, to say the least, and Honor hoped with all her heart that he would never cross her path again.

But it was a great source of comfort to feel that their bills could now be paid; and the girls went to bed that night feeling comparatively happy, for the consciousness of their debts had weighed upon them all. Katherine—though she would not acknowledge it—had felt particularly uncomfortable, for the unused typewriter continued to stare her in the face. Now she felt quite relieved about it, and she had serious thoughts of running into Boston Monday afternoon to buy Christmas presents for the family. It would be such a surprise to them, and she should of course use her own money.

Within half an hour she had fully made up her mind to do this, and was already planning what she should bestow upon each one, when a remark of Honor’s warned her that it would be wiser not to carry out her intentions.

“I hope,” said the eldest sister, “that we shall not lose our heads over our unexpected good fortune. We mustn’t spend a bit more than we can possibly help. Remember, we don’t want any more bills!”

The winter days passed quickly, filled as they were with things of importance to do. The first planting of mushrooms was successful; and Peter, upon his return from the Boston market, to which he took them, proudly added his earnings to the family purse. He pretended that he felt it but a small thing to do, and that the future would prove that he was considering deeds of far greater moment than the cultivation of mushrooms; but in reality he was becoming immensely interested in the pursuit.

Victoria’s violets bloomed in February, and they also were taken to Boston, and disposed of to a florist. Dave Carney attended to this part of the business for her, and was indeed most useful in every way. The Starrs had never been able to discover anything about the antecedents of this member of the household, and in fact they had not made any great effort to do so. They liked the boy, and they found him both obliging and dependable. Peter knew that he had a brother, for he saw one day in Fordham a young man who so closely resembled Dave that he was on the point of speaking to him; and when he questioned Dave upon the subject, the boy told him briefly that it was his brother, and that he was a few years older than himself. He said nothing more, and Peter did not ask for further information, as was characteristic of him.

It was a mild winter, and although there were frequent falls of snow, they were always succeeded by days of such springlike warmth that there was neither sleighing nor coasting, and scarcely any skating.

His sisters suspected that Peter was not particularly happy in his school life, but he did not tell them so. He was a boy who did not make friends easily, and the mere knowledge that he was looked upon as an interloper by the boys at the school which he attended, drove him still farther into his shell, as it were. He had little to do with them, and usually came home as soon as the day’s session was over.

Sophy and Sirius together always watched eagerly for his return, both consumed with the same hope and desire that Peter would invite them to join him in whatever he intended to do—a hope which was more apt to be fulfilled in the case of Sirius than of Sophy. An eight-year-old sister is by no means so interesting a companion, Peter thought, as an active and particularly intelligent dog.

There were occasions, however, when Sophy was bidden to bear him company; and, on a certain afternoon, the little girl was made happy by the announcement that Peter was going for a walk, and if she wanted to go, and would promise not to get tired, and not to make a fuss if they came across any muskrats or field mice, and, in fact, to show no signs of fear about anything which they might meet, she should be allowed to accompany her brother and his dog.

Sophy, transported with delight, and ready to promise anything in the way of courage, ran for her hat and jacket and quickly followed Peter to the barn, whither he gone to inspect the mushroom bed. It was a mild day in early spring. The young leaves had just burst forth upon the trees, and the smell of earth, and the gentle murmurings of the little brooks in pasture and woods, and the soft freshness of the breeze, showed that another winter had passed. Many of the birds had returned to their summer homes and were busily engaged in nest-building, and little chipmunks darted about in a ceaseless game of tag, pausing for a moment to peer inquisitively at Sophy with their bright eyes, and then vanishing from sight. Peter, having attended to his affairs at the barn, took his way across the pasture. Sirius scampered on in advance, nosing here and there along the path, stopping to investigate every hole and barking noisily at a gray squirrel, which climbed the trunk of a tree at his approach, and then sat on a branch in safety, but extreme indignation. “Do squirrels go to sleep in winter, Peter?” asked Sophy, as she trudged along close to his side.

“They do usually, but it was so warm this winter I guess they didn’t get so sound asleep. I’ll tell you something, Soph. Carney and I both think the same thing. You know people always say that when there are a lot of nuts, it means that we are going to have a cold winter and the squirrels will have plenty to eat. Well, you know there were plenty of nuts last fall, and look at the winter we’ve had! As warm as toast. I think, and Carney thinks so, too, that it means a warm winter to have so many nuts. The squirrels are not going to sleep so much, and so they will need more food. And look at last year; scarcely any nuts in the fall and an awfully cold winter. I’m going to write to the Transcript about it sometime, and see what people say. Other people will answer, and it will be lots of fun. Sophy, I’ll tell you something if you’ll promise never to tell. Will you?”

“Do you mean never?”

“Yes, never, until I’ve done it. Then I’ll tell it myself.”

“All right, Peter, I’ll promise,” said the little sister. The absence of the front teeth made her lisp slightly, and Peter was alarmingly apt to make fun of this defect when she used the letter “s”; but he was too much engrossed with his subject at present to remark upon it, greatly to Sophy’s relief. A wave of gratification filled her heart, both because of this and because her brother was apparently about to make a confidante of her.

“I’ll promise,” she repeated solemnly. “What is it?”

“When I grow up,” said Peter, “in a very few years, I’m going to write a book.”

“Peter! A real printed book?”

“Of course, child. What other kind of a book could it be?”

“And what will it be about? A story like Alice in Wonderland or Little Women?”

“Little Women! A girl’s story! No indeed. There won’t be a girl in the book, that is one thing certain. But it is to be about everything else. You know I really know a lot about all sorts of things, and I intend to write about everything that I know the least thing about.”

“Goody me!” exclaimed the astonished Sophy. “It will be an awful big book, Peter!”

“Of course it will. It will probably be in a great many volumes, all bound alike. It will be a regular Encyclopedia, and people will probably look into it when they want to find out about anything. I’m going to tell about squirrels and birds and mushrooms and muskrats and ants and bees and boys’ games and schools—I’m going to tell a lot about schools, how to keep them, and all that—and travels—I mean to travel as soon as I get enough money and have made enough for you girls to live on, and I shall write about every place I visit, and oh, everything!”

“I should think you would have a little room in so many volumes to say something about girls,” murmured Sophy.

“But what for?” demanded Peter. “Why should I waste my time writing about them? You know very well, Sophy, that girls aren’t at all interesting, as ants or birds are, for instance. You know that, don’t you?”

“Yes,” said Sophy, humbly; “I know that because you have often told me so, but then, Peter, you can talk to a girl, but you can’t talk to an ant or a bird. Doesn’t that make some difference?”

“Not much,” he replied. “I would rather watch a colony of ants any day than talk to a girl. Now mind, Sophy, you don’t tell any one about my book.”

“Indeed I won’t, Peter, and I think it’s going to be a splendid book, even if there are no girls in it. I wish it was all made, though.”

“So do I,” said he; “but it won’t take long when I once get started on it. Hark! What’s that?”

A strange wild cry rang through the woods. Sirius stopped short in the path, with ears erect and motionless tail, while Sophy gave a little shriek and clung to her brother’s arm.

CHAPTER IX.

SOPHY HAS AN ADVENTURE.

“WHAT is it?” whispered Sophy. “Oh, Peter, is it a ghost?”

“A ghost! Pooh, what nonsense! I’ll never bring you again, Sophy. You promised you wouldn’t be afraid of anything.”

“Oh, but, Peter, that was such a queer noise, and so dreadful! If you could only tell me what it was!”

“An owl, very likely. Sometimes they make queer noises like that. Let’s try to find it. Sik ’em, Sirius, sik ’em, sir!” And disengaging himself from Sophy’s detaining hand he and the dog dashed into a by-path and disappeared from sight.

Sophy tried to follow, but there were many intersecting paths or tracks in this part of the woods, and she was not in the least sure which one her brother had taken. She ran along one, only to find that it was rendered impassable by some brambles, so she turned and went back to her starting-point to try another. She hoped that she should not again hear that terrible cry. It might be an owl, as Peter had suggested, but then again it might not. Peter did not really know for a certainty what it was. And then, as suddenly as it had come before, rang out once more this unearthly shriek. Sophy covered her face with her hands for an instant. Then, indifferent as to what might become of her if only she could get as far as possible from this terrible creature, whatever it might be, she fled in the opposite direction to that from which the sound appeared to come.

Peter and Sirius pursued their way with unerring instinct to a large tree, upon the unleaved branch of which sat an immense owl. What had at first disturbed it Peter could not guess, but at his approach the owl gave another cry and then, spreading its wings, flew aimlessly away into the deeper woods, flapping blindly among the trees as it went.

It was unusual to see an owl so active in the daytime, and Peter, his naturalist’s nature all alive, followed closely, anxious to see what would happen next. He stopped long enough, however, to try to discover what had frightened the bird, but could find nothing. Then he concluded that the enemy, whatever it was, must have disappeared.

It was a great horned owl, he was almost sure, and he knew that one of that species was rarely seen so near civilization. He followed it as closely as possible, but during his short stop to look for the cause of its fright the owl had disappeared, and Peter did not see it again. After spending some time in a fruitless search for it, he returned to the edge of the wood, supposing that he should find Sophy where he had left her; but his thoughts were now distracted by something else.

The excited barking of Sirius proved that he had come upon prey of some sort, and sure enough, when Peter reached the dog he saw that he had discovered the entrance to a nest of field mice beneath an old log, and already he had killed one of the parents. Peter hoped to be in time to save the other, but he was not, and scarcely liked to scold Sirius for the double murder, for he knew the dog was only following the instincts of his kind. He determined to secure the young ones, however, if young ones there were.

He turned over the log, and there beneath it he found a neatly made nest of long grasses, built between the detached bark and the log itself, and containing a number of tiny baby-mice. They were orphans now, alas! the father and mother having both been killed by Sirius, but Peter determined that the little ones should not suffer for this misfortune. Carefully removing the nest from its resting-place, he laid it in his cap and started for home. He would have liked to examine the log further, for it seemed to be an interesting place. A colony of large black ants, which had fashioned for themselves a most elaborate dwelling, were running about now in a distracted manner, owing to the sudden upheaval of the log, which had probably been their undisturbed home for a long time; and Peter would have been glad to watch them.

But from the way in which Sirius was barking and sniffing at a hole in the log, Peter was led to suspect that another nest of mice might be there, and rather than have that family also broken up, and because he had no way of disposing of the little creatures in his cap, he hurried away from the fascinating scene, calling to the dog to follow.

He took a short cut across the woody pasture, which lay on the outskirts of the thicker woods, his mind so absorbed with the adventure, that there was no room for thought of Sophy. He had forgotten her as completely as though she did not exist.

Then, too, to his delight and surprise, he came across some fungi. They were growing in a grassy place at the border of the field, and just above the river. It seemed very early in the season for mushrooms, but still these might be of an edible variety, and if they were, would it not be an excellent plan to take them home for supper? The family refrained always from eating the cultivated mushrooms which Peter could sell, but if they were beginning already to grow wild, they surely might be indulged in.

Peter placed his cap on the top of a rock, which was too high and too steep for Sirius to scale, and proceeded to test the fungi. Were they edible or not? Unfortunately they were not, as he soon discovered by bruising the gills. A white milk exuded, and his reading had taught Peter that such were to be avoided. Greatly disappointed, he picked up his capful of mice once more and continued on his way.

Arrived at the barn, he made the little orphans as comfortable as possible in a place which was quite protected from an attack by Sirius. He looked for Carney, but the boy was not to be found. Victoria, however, was busy with her violets, and Peter consulted with her as to the best method of disposing of his new pets.

“Dear me!” exclaimed Victoria, when he showed them to her. “They are the cunningest things I ever saw, but you are not going to keep them, are you, Peter? Why not set them free?”

“Vic, you must be perfectly crazy,” said Peter. “Set them free, these poor little things without any father or mother? They would be eaten right up by something. I had no idea you were so cruel. I am going to keep them until they’re old enough to look out for themselves, and then I’ll take them out to the pasture and let them go, if they want to.”

“I don’t know what Katherine will say, she hates mice so.”

“Katherine needn’t know anything about them. She never comes near the barn.”

“Do you know where Sophy is?” Victoria called after him as he walked off, but Peter did not hear her. He had placed his new pets as comfortably as possible, and now he hastened back to the fascinating log, a good mile away though it was.

Sirius accompanied him, but was ordered to remain at a safe distance, lest the other families of mice should be disturbed, and the dog was forced to content himself with digging a hole and burrowing so deep after imaginary prey, that nothing could be seen but a wagging tail above the ground.

Peter remained there until almost dark, watching the ants, which had apparently recovered from the shock of the disturbance, and were trying now to make themselves as comfortable as possible after the fright. Some were carrying the eggs to a more retired place than that in which they were, now that the log had been turned upon another side, while others were engaged in repairing the injured passage-ways of their dwelling.

At last the pangs of hunger warned Peter that it must be nearly supper time, and he again went home, Sirius following, covered with brown earth, but happy as a king, even though his search underground had failed to bring anything to light that was desirable.

When Peter reached home, his three elder sisters came hurrying to meet him.

“Where is Sophy?” they cried with one voice. “What have you done with her?”

Peter stopped short in his walk across the grass.

“I don’t know,” said he, a sudden dismay striking him as he spoke. “Didn’t she come home?”

“No! We haven’t seen her since she went with you. Oh, Peter, where is the child?”

Sophy in the meantime had wandered far into the woods. In her desire to escape from the creature, whoever or whatever it might be, that had so frightened her, she paid no heed to her whereabouts. Blindly she ran on, stumbling, falling, and picking herself up again only to run and fall once more. These woods were not very extensive, but the paths in them were many and were confusing, and Sophy without being in the least aware of it went around and around in a complete circle more than once.

At one time she was very near the road, and had a carriage chanced to pass at that moment she would have heard it and would have discovered where she was, and could then have easily made her way home by the road; but there was no sound but the chirping and twittering of the newly arrived birds among the branches of the tall trees of this little forest.

When she paused from sheer exhaustion, she heard a stealthy rustling among the dead leaves and the underbrush, and presently a snake emerged, raising its head when it saw her, and darting out its forked tongue in anger. It was a harmless little creature, and no doubt was as anxious to escape from this intruder as she could be to avoid the snake, but Sophy did not stop to consider this. She forgot completely that Peter had often told her that the snakes which frequented these woods and meadows were not dangerous, and she fled precipitately from the spot.

At last her aimless wandering brought her to the extreme edge of the wood at the point farthest away from home. To her joy she saw an open space before her, and actually a piece of the sky was visible. It was growing late apparently. The shadows of evening had crept upon her in the woods without her being conscious of them. Now it seemed as if it must be twilight, although it was yet far from being dark.

As she trudged along, too tired to run, she fancied that she heard the voices of men. She paused for a moment, fearing new dangers. Yes, some men were not far off, and as they were speaking some strange jargon, Sophy suspected that they were Italians. She was very much afraid of Italians, with their dark skins and fiery black eyes. There were many at work upon the railroad, and the child would go a long way around to avoid meeting them even in broad daylight, and when she was with some one else. Now when she was alone, and it was almost dark, she was terrified indeed. The dangers of the forest were as nothing to this. She was about to turn and run back when she heard their voices growing fainter. Apparently they were leaving the spot for the night. If she waited long enough, she could go home.

Sophy thought that she should feel safer if she were to say her prayers, so she knelt down in the dead leaves and repeated “Our Father” very softly, adding before she rose, “And please, God, take me safe home. I’m so frightened. For Jesus Christ’s sake, Amen.” When she had finished she felt braver. It was all very quiet, and the men had gone. She walked out of the wood and found in the dim light a footpath, which she followed. It led past the base of the embankment of the railroad, a sandy embankment which towered far above her, and she soon reached the carriage road which passed under the railroad at this point.

Sophy knew this road well, and she knew that by following it towards the right she should eventually reach home, although it was a long distance. She wondered where Peter was, if he had come back to look for her, if he was in the forest now, searching for her. And the girls, what were they doing? Were they sitting down to supper now without her? She wondered if her silver mug had been filled with nice rich milk as usual, and if there was toast to-night for supper. Perhaps Honor was cooking something on the chafing-dish, as she did sometimes by way of a great treat. Sophy did wish that she was there. She was so hungry and it was so far! It seemed as if she must keep walking all night in order to reach there.

At last, quite exhausted, she sat down upon a rock by the roadside. She must rest for a few moments at the foot of the long hill which loomed up before her. There was a little house at the top, she knew, and a short distance farther on their own place began, although their house was a half-mile beyond. She had just made up her mind to continue her weary march, when she saw two young men or boys emerge from the woods from the other side of the road from those in which she had been. She was sitting in the shadow of some large bushes, and she thought if she kept very still that they might not notice her. She scarcely dared to breathe, but she heard very distinctly the beating of her heart, and the sound frightened her. As the boys approached, she heard one of them say:

“An’ yer won’t tell me nothin’? Well, then, yer don’t git any of the stuff.”

“I don’t want it,” replied the other, as they passed her.

To Sophy’s astonishment, she recognized the voice as that of Dave Carney. Was it—could it possibly be he? She peered after him, and then springing to her feet she ran as fast as she could up the road in pursuit.

“Dave! Dave!” she cried. “Wait for me! I’m lost, and I’m so glad to see you. Oh, so glad!”

And then to Carney’s astonishment a small hand was thrust into his hand, and a small and anxious face was turned up towards his face.

“Why, where’d you come from?” he asked, stopping abruptly in his walk, while his companion uttered an exclamation of anger.

“I went to the woods with Peter, and I got lost. There was a terrible scream, and it frightened me dreadfully, and I’ve been all this time trying to find my way home. Oh, Dave, I’m so glad to see you!” said the child, forgetting her fatigue, and dancing with glee, while she still tightly grasped his hand. “You’ve no idea how dreadful it was. Who is that, Dave? Is it your brother? He looks just like you.”

“No matter who I am,” said the stranger, roughly. “I ain’t got no use for yer, that’s one thing, sure. Now just yer remember, Dave! yer can’t work yer pious notions on me, an’ I’ll do as I like. I’ve been crooked a good long time, now, an’ I’ll stay crooked. Yer was as crooked yerself once, an’ I guess yer are yet, only yer find it don’t pay just at the present time. I’ll leave yer here,” he added with an oath, and suddenly disappeared among the trees by the roadside.

“That surely can’t be your brother, Dave,” said Sophy, disapprovingly. “I don’t like the way he talks, at all. I’m glad he went away. Oh, I’m so glad I saw you, though! I don’t feel half as tired now.”

Dave said little,—he was a lad of few words,—but he held the little girl’s hand and helped her over the rough or the steep places in the road; and at last they were in sight of the house, and the light which shone from an upper window seemed like a beacon of hope to the little wanderer.

And presently she was in the house, with Honor’s arms about her, and Katherine taking her hat and coat, while Victoria ran to the barn, calling to Peter that she was found. He and Victoria had been to the place in the woods where he had left her, and then had come back to get lanterns, and to ask some neighbors to join in the search. The brother and sisters had been quite beside themselves with anxiety, and their joy and relief when Sophy appeared was almost too great for words.

As for Sophy herself, she felt amply repaid for her fatigue and fear when she found herself the centre of importance. She was led in state to the supper table, she was helped before any of the others with the choicest viands, including an egg which B. Lafferty cooked in a little dish especially for her, and brought to her with much circumstance, and, crowning feature of the occasion, a vase of wild flowers which Katherine had gathered that afternoon was placed beside her plate.

When her appetite was somewhat appeased, Sophy recounted her adventures, and even Peter refrained from condemning her with cold criticism, when she described her fear of the snake which had “stuck out its tongue at her.” In fact, she was in every sense of the word the heroine of the evening, and it was so unusual an experience that she could not help enjoying it.

“I wonder where Dave had been,” remarked Honor. “It was odd that he should have come along just at the right moment for you, Sophy. I am perfectly thankful that he did. Do you suppose that was his brother, Peter?”

“Don’t know,” replied Peter, as he helped himself to toast, and proceeded to butter it with a lavish hand. “Carney’s got a brother, only he never says much about him.”

“Peter, it is very bad form to spread butter on your bread or your toast like that!” said Katherine. “You ought to put it on just where you are going to eat it.”

“Pshaw! Who cares for form?” demanded Peter, crunching his toast with an air of distinct enjoyment. “What I want is taste, not form, Miss K. R. Starr.”

“It really tastes better Katherine’s way,” remarked Victoria, “if you have never tried it; but don’t change on our account, for the world! By the way, the people are really moving into the house on the hill. I saw some wagon loads of furniture going up there to-day. I do hope we shall like them.”

“I can’t see that it makes any difference whether we like them or not,” said Honor. “We shan’t see anything of them.”

“But why not, Honor?” asked Katherine. “They are going to be very near neighbors, and I can’t see why, if they are nice people, we shouldn’t be neighborly to them.”

“Father always liked us to be neighborly to our neighbors, even if he didn’t go about much himself,” added Victoria.

“It was very different then,” said Honor. “We weren’t working for our living. Those people, if they are rich and don’t know anything about us, will probably look down upon us, and I shall never expose myself to anything of that sort. No indeed. Let us keep to ourselves as much as we can, and to the old friends who know about us.”

“Well, I am interested in them anyhow,” said Victoria. “There are a father and mother and two children, I believe, and the boy’s name is Roger. I hope it will be some one for Peter. I heard all that from the postmistress, in case you want to know my authority.”

“I wish you wouldn’t gossip with the postmistress, Vic,” said Honor, with some severity. “It seems to me it is a queer thing to do.”

“But why?” asked her sister, imperturbably. “She’s known me and I’ve known her all my life. Why shouldn’t we have a little agreeable conversation together when I go for the letters? She told me this morning when she handed me Aunt Sophia’s postal card saying she was coming to see us next week, that she guessed—the postmistress guessed, I mean—that my Aunt Ward would be out here before long. Now that shows that she is a clever woman, as well as an honest one, for Aunt Sophia had only signed her initials, S.S.W,’ and yet she knew right away who it was from. And it wasn’t really necessary for her to let me know she had read the postal card, was it? So that was very honest. Oh, I like her, and she tells me a lot I want to know.”

CHAPTER X.

THE NEW NEIGHBORS ON THE HILL.

MRS. WENTWORTH WARD, true to the word written upon her postal card, appeared at Glen Arden early in the ensuing week. Upon this occasion she made known to her nieces her intention of spending the greater part of the next five months at Glen Arden, and naturally this announcement was received with some dismay.

“You should have some one with you part of the year, at least,” said their aunt, “and it suits me to come here. I had thought of going abroad for the summer, and of taking one of you with me, but there are various matters of importance which must be attended to, and which will suffer frightfully if I am not here to look after them. It is necessary for me to be near town. I shall board with you, of course. I may just as well pay the money to you that I should at a hotel at Magnolia or Nahant, and I don’t care for the sea this year. And I am sure you must be in need of the money. I can’t imagine how you manage to get along on so little.”

Honor ignored the close of this speech, and politely expressed her pleasure at the prospect of such an extended visit from her aunt, though it is to be feared that her tone was not very hearty. She was the only one of the family who could see her, Katherine being in the schoolroom, and Victoria and Peter at school in Fordham. This was one of Mrs. Wentworth Ward’s customs which her nieces considered most aggravating. She invariably came to Glen Arden during school hours, and expected their undivided attention.

Though she paid close observance to her own engagements, she had small regard for those of other people, and her nieces’ methods of supporting themselves she could never be induced to take seriously.

“The first of May will be next Thursday, a week from to-day,” continued she, “and I shall come on the three o’clock train. You may give me your father’s old room. It was mine when I lived here, you know, and I like it.”

“Yes,” murmured Honor, remembering that Katherine now occupied the room, and wondering what she would say to being turned out. “And is there anything else you would like, Aunt Sophia? I think perhaps I had better get another cook, and let B. Laf—I mean Blanch—do the upstairs work. She is not a very superior cook, and with such a large family we shall need two servants.”

“I will bring my waitress, Ellen Higgins, who has been with me so long,” rejoined Mrs. Ward, briskly. “I intended to suggest it, and she is an excellent cook herself, and can give Blanch—extraordinary name for an Irishwoman, Honor!—she can give Blanch lessons in cooking. I will also, and there are a number of other things that I want to teach you. Therefore you may expect me in the 3 P.M. train on Thursday, the first day of May. I shall bring my own desk, and my two canaries, my typewriter, and a number of other little things.”

“We have a typewriter,” said Honor, somewhat appalled by this list. “Perhaps you could use it, and not bring your own.”

“You have a typewriter? Where did you get it, and whose is it?”

“It is Katherine’s.”

“Indeed! And does she use it with ease?”

“Er—not exactly,” faltered Honor, who felt all too surely that she had made a misstep, and perhaps a fatal one. What would their aunt say if she knew that they had owned a typewriter for nearly six months, and that not one of them could make use of it? And she would find it out, she surely would! Why, oh why, had Honor ever given her this superfluous bit of information? Without it she need never have known that there was such a thing in the house.

“Very well, then, I shall not bring my own,” said Mrs. Wentworth Ward, rising as she spoke. “On the contrary, I will engage Katherine to be my secretary, and of course she will prefer to use her own machine which she is accustomed to. You tell her, will you, Honor, that I shall pay her an ample salary. And now good-bye, my dear! It will really be very pleasant to be with you all. My love to the others. I am not going to take the train yet. The carriage that is waiting will carry me down to Fordham, where I have a meeting. Good-bye.”

And in a moment she was gone. Honor stood on the piazza, looking at the back of the carriage as it rolled up the avenue. One more week, and then, good-bye, indeed! It would be the end of their careless freedom, their independence, their good times. For although it had been a sad winter in many ways, although they had missed the dear father more than words could express, although the question of money had at times pressed heavily upon them, yet in spite of all they had been happy with one another, they had enjoyed the sense of independence which they had gained from the fact that they were supporting, or trying to support, themselves, and there had been intense satisfaction in the mere feeling that they were earning money. Little though it was, it was theirs by the right of labor, and Honor was proud of it.

To be sure, they should now earn more, for she knew that her aunt would pay them generously; but she saw an endless line of small vexations rising and stretching themselves through the summer, the little trials that are not much in themselves, but which, when they come in rapid succession, are wearing and annoying, to say the least. Katherine, for one, would not brook the interference which was sure to come from her aunt. And what would she say to being obliged to give up her room, and to being engaged as secretary and typewriter?

Depressed and disturbed though she was feeling, Honor laughed aloud at the thought of the wonders which Katherine was expected to perform upon her writing-machine. As far as her present knowledge went she might just as well be required to translate something from the Sanscrit.

And then, Honor, after one more look across the lawn where her father’s dear trees were in full leaf now, and the grass was green, and the robins were hopping about in ecstasy over the coming of spring, left the piazza and went back to the schoolroom. She determined to say nothing of these plans of her Aunt Sophia’s until Victoria should come home. It was curious, said Honor to herself, that they were all growing to lean upon Victoria.

Therefore, it was not until the afternoon, when they had a few moments of leisure before Katherine should go to one of her music pupils, that Honor imparted to them her dire intelligence.

It had precisely the effect which she had feared. Katherine flatly declined to give up her room to her aunt, and declared that it was an imposition to have her come there at all. She, for one, refused to endure it. As to acting as her secretary, it was out of the question. Besides, she could not use the typewriter. Why had Honor ever led Aunt Sophia to suppose that she could? Honor had drawn them into this scrape; now she must get them out of it. She need not have told Aunt Sophia that they owned a typewriter.

Katherine walked up and down the shady end of the piazza, looking very tall and extremely angry. Indignation was written in every line of her beautiful face. She had, oddly enough, the perfectly straight features of the aunt whom she did not particularly love; but her eyes and hair were very dark and her forehead was low and broad. It would have annoyed her extremely to be told that she looked like Mrs. Wentworth Ward, who, nevertheless, was a handsome woman.

“I see no way out of it,” said Honor. She was sitting in the hammock, and swung herself to and fro while she watched Katherine’s rapid movements. Victoria had perched herself upon the railing of the piazza, and was looking out across the lawn.

“And, Katherine, you bought the typewriter. You are responsible for its being in the house, so I really don’t think you ought to blame me for this complication. I know it was foolish of me ever to tell Aunt Sophia, but I was so taken aback when I heard that she was coming for five months, and was going to bring all those things with her, including that patronizing Ellen Higgins, whom I can’t bear, that I said the first thing that came into my head. I thought if she used ours,—yours, I mean,—it would be one thing less to bring with her.”

“I don’t see why you took the news so meekly,” said Katherine. “Why didn’t you tell her right up and down that she couldn’t come?”

“Oh, of course Honor couldn’t do that!” said Victoria. “It would have been very rude, and, besides, Katherine, she is our own aunt.”

“Very well, then, you can give up your room to her, and you can be her secretary. It is easy for you to say we ought to have her here, for you don’t have to do anything. I have to give up my dear room, which I love because it was father’s, and go to that hot third-story one, I suppose. As for the typewriter, it is simply out of the question. I can’t use it, and I won’t learn to use it just to please Aunt Sophia; and if Honor is going to keep flinging it in my face, she can keep on flinging, that is all. And now it is time for me to go.”

She picked up her music case and was soon walking rapidly away from them across the lawn.

“What are we to do about it?” sighed Honor. “I knew Katherine would be frantic, and I suppose it is provoking for her, but I don’t see why she need be so furious with me.”

“Oh, never mind!” said Victoria, looking after Katherine’s hurrying figure. “Katherine’s bark is worse than her bite, you know, and she will probably have gotten over some of it, before she comes back. I am sorry for her scholars, though, this afternoon! But, Honor, I have an idea.”

“What is it, Vic? If it is a cheering one, as I suppose it is, do hurry and tell me, for I feel bowed to the earth with gloom.”

“I will learn to use the typewriter, and I will be Aunt Sophia’s secretary through the summer. I have been wild to try it, but I have had so much to do, I couldn’t. I will learn to use it before she comes and practise on it in secret, after she gets here, and by the time school is over, I shall be ready for work. She can’t expect any of us to do it before June, while we are so busy, and we can make Katherine’s music an excuse for her not to do it at all. She will have to practise very hard through the summer, we can say. You write a nice note to Aunt Sophia and tell her how it is, so that she may be prepared.”

“Oh, Vic, what a dear you are! You do help me out of so many difficulties. Do you really think, though, that you can learn to use it in so short a time?”

“Of course,” replied Victoria. “One can do anything one sets out to do, if one only tries, and I mean to conquer that white elephant of a typewriter, if only for the sake of feeling that the forty dollars wasn’t wasted; and then, too, if Aunt Sophia pays me well, it will be quite a nice sum for us to make. I will go tinker at it now, for I have a little time, and those books of lessons are quite a help. So, cheer up, Honor! We may get some fun out of Aunt Sophia’s visit, after all.

“‘Jog on, jog on the footpath way,’”

she hummed, as she went into the house and sought the hitherto neglected writing-machine.

In the meantime, Katherine pursued her way across the fields to the village, where she intended to take an electric car. She was still very angry and greatly irritated by her late conversation, and by the prospect of five months of Aunt Sophia’s uninterrupted society. How hateful it was that they were so poor that they were forced to submit to the imposition, as she termed it. If Aunt Sophia were coming as a visitor, it would be different, but as a boarder she would, no doubt, consider herself privileged to say and do exactly what she wished, and how could she be expected to give up her room to her? And besides all this, as Katherine really felt guilty about the purchase of the typewriter, every word that Honor spoke upon the subject went home.

After a while, however, her better nature prevailed. It was always thus with Katherine, as her sisters knew. If sufficient time were given her, she was sure to come out of her fits of temper in the sweetest possible frame of mind, so repentant for all that she had said, and so desirous to atone for it, that it was impossible to help loving her more than ever. On this occasion, before she had reached Fordham she had begun to be sorry, and by the time she had returned to the village, after giving two music lessons, she was ready to do all and more than her sisters required of her.

She left the electric car at the post-office and found there several letters for the family; and then, the afternoon being so beautiful, she concluded to walk home by a somewhat indirect way, one which led her past the entrance to the house on the hill, as the Starrs had been in the habit of calling it. This house was a handsome one which had been vacant for two years. The grounds about it were not extensive, but they had always been well kept until the death of the owner. Since then they had been somewhat neglected; but now the place had been rented, and Katherine was glad to see, as she approached, that men were at work on the lawn and on the avenue which led up a rather steep incline to the house.

She paused for a moment to watch them, and then remembering that the family were probably already there, she hurried on, hoping that she had not been seen. She had not gone more than a few yards, however, before she heard a footstep behind and a voice said:

“Miss Starr, I beg your pardon, but is not this yours?”

Turning, Katherine saw a lady, who held towards her a letter.

“Oh, thank you ever so much!” said Katherine. “I slipped them into my music case at the post-office. I wonder if any more have dropped out?”

“I think not,” said the lady, smiling in a friendly way which won Katherine’s heart upon the spot. “I have been behind you all the way, and this did not fall until just as you reached our place. I couldn’t help seeing the address on it, and so I knew you were one of the Miss Starrs, whom we have heard so much about and are so anxious to meet. I hope you are going to be very neighborly.”

“Yes, indeed!” said Katherine, cordially. She was charmed with the lady’s manner, and quite forgot Honor’s intention to have nothing to do with the newcomers. “We will come and call upon you very soon. You are Mrs. Madison, I suppose.”

“Not Mrs., but Miss,” corrected her new friend, again with the lovely smile that had so attracted the young girl. She was a beautiful woman, with fair hair and eyes of deep blue, and there was that in her face which won Katherine’s love at first sight. She felt that she had found a friend, and, with all the enthusiasm of her young and ardent nature, she loved her before she knew her.

“My name is Margaret Madison. I think you must be the musical one, as you have a familiar-looking roll in your hand. You must come and see my music-room. I play the violin myself, and I should so much enjoy playing with you.”

Katherine’s dark eyes grew round with excitement and the color deepened in her face.

“The violin!” she exclaimed. “And you want me to accompany you? How perfectly lovely it will be!”

“We shall have some good music,” said Miss Madison; “you on the piano, and I on the violin. And my brother sings a little.”

“Oh, your brother!” said Katherine. “I’m so glad you have a brother, for we were hoping that he would do for Peter.”

Miss Madison looked somewhat astonished at this remark, but she said nothing.

“Peter is my brother,” continued Katherine, “and he doesn’t care for many boys, so I do hope your brother and he will get on together. We were so glad when we heard that another boy was coming. My sisters and I will call upon you very soon. Good-bye!”

She did not notice that Miss Madison laughed outright as she left her, so excited was she at the tempting prospect held out to her of the music which was to be enjoyed. She hurried home to tell her sisters of the meeting, and to beg Honor to reconsider her determination to have nothing to do with the new neighbors, but to go at once to call, and in the same breath she assured them that Aunt Sophia could have her room and she would try to use the typewriter.

She was greatly relieved, however, when her sisters told her that her last offer was unnecessary. Victoria had succeeded so well with her first efforts that she felt quite enthusiastic about it and would on no account give up the position to Katherine.

At first Honor would not listen to the suggestion that they should call upon the Madisons. It was only after much urging from both Katherine and Victoria that she finally consented; and then she took pains to make it very clear to them that she would go chiefly and solely because she wanted Peter to have a companion, and as there was a brother there who would no doubt be a desirable boy for him to know, it would perhaps prevent awkwardness for them to become acquainted with the other members of the family. The next afternoon, therefore, was set apart for making the visit.

This formality devolved naturally upon Honor and Katherine, but at the last moment Victoria announced that she should accompany them, so anxious was she to see the music-room and the other interesting things which were sure to be there, as well as the beautiful Miss Madison herself, of whom Katherine had talked so enthusiastically ever since she had met her the day before.

The three sisters made ready for their call, and before long were climbing the steep hill. They were about to ring the bell, when the door was opened for them by Miss Madison.

“I saw you coming,” she said, “and I thought I would let you in myself. How good of you to come so soon. I am delighted to see you. Now you must tell me which is Honor and which is Katherine and which Victoria,” she added as she shook hands with each. “You see I know all your names though I don’t know you apart. Come into the house, and I will send for my mother.”

They went into the parlor, and as they did so a gentleman rose and came forward. He was a good-looking young man with blue eyes like Miss Madison’s, though his hair was darker than hers. Before the girls had time to wonder who he was their hostess introduced him.

“This is my brother Roger,” said she. “Do you think he will ‘do for Peter’?” she added, laughing as she turned to Katherine.

“Oh,” exclaimed Katherine, wanting to laugh herself, but fearing that Honor would be shocked; “what must you have thought of me yesterday! We were told that he was a boy.”

“So I am in a great many respects,” said Roger Madison. “I’m sure that I’ll ‘do for Peter.’”

In the meantime, what had become of Victoria? She had paused for a moment in the doorway and then had turned and disappeared. Her one thought was flight, and like a flash she ran down the avenue and was lost to sight beneath the brow of the hill.

Miss Madison’s brother was the man who had bought the etching! What would Honor say?

CHAPTER XI.

VICTORIA DECIDES TO KEEP IT SECRET.

WHAT would Honor say? This was Victoria’s chief thought as she rushed headlong down the hill, not pausing until she had reached the safe shelter of their own place. There beneath one of the old trees she found a rustic bench, and sinking down upon it, quite breathless from her run, she tried to consider calmly the situation.

What would Honor say? She who had hoped that they might never see the young man again because in her eyes the affair had been so mortifying! And so it had been, Victoria said to herself. What would Mr. Madison himself think when he learned that one of his new neighbors was actually the girl whom he had encountered in a Boston picture store peddling her wares, and of whom he had bought something purely as an act of charity?

Victoria, looking back at the occurrence, felt perfectly confident that it was chiefly owing to his good nature that he had bought the etching.

He was sorry, probably, for a girl who was forced to do such a thing, and had given her an extra five or ten dollars merely out of charity. Victoria writhed in spirit.

She did not regret her expedition to Boston, for they had been in sore need of the money, and to part with the pictures and the jewelry had been a perfectly honorable means of getting it. She did not feel in the least degree ashamed of having sold the etchings, but she was deeply mortified when she remembered that she had allowed herself to accept the higher price from one who was a complete stranger to her, and one who certainly did appear to be sorry for her.

The Starr family pride—of which this daughter of the house had no small share—was up in arms. She felt that she could never look Roger Madison in the face. That he would remember her as clearly as she remembered him, she had not the smallest doubt.

And then again, what would Honor say? She would probably flatly refuse to have anything more to do with the Madisons, which would be unfortunate, for Katherine had set her heart upon the anticipated music that she was to enjoy with Miss Madison. Katherine was of an ardent temperament, and her likings were as strong and unchangeable as her dislikes. Already she loved and admired Miss Madison with all the enthusiasm at her command, and it would be a bitter disappointment to her if Honor should decree that the two families were to have no further intercourse. Indeed, Katherine would in all probability decline to listen to Honor, and that would make trouble. What should be done to avert these consequences?

There was but one course to pursue, and that was to keep her family in ignorance of the fact that she had ever seen Roger Madison before. Victoria fairly gasped as this solution of the difficulty presented itself. Could she keep such a secret? The sisters were in the habit of talking freely together and of telling one another all the events both large and small that came into their day. Not to make known to Honor and Katherine the fact that Victoria had met Mr. Madison before, and under the peculiar circumstances which had made the incident a matter of family history, required some determination. It meant far more to her than it would to many another girl. To Victoria it seemed like an act of deliberate deception, and she hesitated before taking the step.

“I don’t want to deceive them, I am sure,” she said to herself, as she sat under the trees this beautiful afternoon in the last week of April, looking with troubled eyes towards the house on the hill; “but it does seem a pity to deprive Katherine of the music, and if Honor knows about it, she will probably be almost rude to the Madisons, for she will be so anxious to show her pride about it, and that seems a pity, for they are so pleasant and evidently want to be friendly. I can keep out of Mr. Madison’s way, and perhaps it will be a long time before he discovers me. I wish I had some older person to ask. I wish I had a mother. It must be so lovely to have one to go to whenever anything troublesome comes up. I wonder if girls who have mothers realize how terrible it is not to have one.”

Victoria’s mind wandered from her present anxiety to the thought of the mother who had died when Sophy was a baby. She had been only seven years old herself at the time, but she remembered her perfectly, and the change which it had made in her father. He had become so grave and quiet after that, and although he was always devoted to his children, he was different, Honor always said, from what he had been before. Honor had tried so faithfully to be a mother to the younger ones, thought Victoria.

“But then Honor is really so little older than I am, that sometimes it seems as if she didn’t know a great deal more herself. If only Aunt Sophia were different! But she would be no help. No, I must decide for myself and—I decide to keep it a secret!”

Victoria said the last few words aloud, with slow and deliberate emphasis. Then she rose.

“What must they have thought of me, running away in that style? And what shall I say to the girls? I shall just have to tell them that I was overwhelmed with shyness just as we were going into the room. They won’t believe me, because I’m not often shy, but I am sure it was the truth. I was frightened to pieces. What a time I shall have making up excuses for not going there, or seeing Mr. Madison if he comes here—if he comes! Very probably he won’t. And I must be careful about the trains. It would be awkward enough to meet him at our little station. Dear me, what a summer it is going to be! Aunt Sophia at Glen Arden, and the man who bought the etching in the house on the hill!

“‘Jog on, jog on the footpath way,

And merrily hent the stile—a!’

I will divert my mind by working in the garden a little. Or no, I will practise on the typewriter! If I don’t learn to do it easily soon, Aunt Sophia will suspect the plot. How many secrets we’re having now. I don’t mind having them from Aunt Sophia, but I do hate to have anything on my mind that Honor and Katherine are not to know.”

She had not been long at work before she heard footsteps upon the piazza, and the voices of her two sisters.

“Where do you suppose Vic can be?” Honor was saying. “I really feel quite anxious about her. Vic, are you here?” she called, coming into the house. “Why, child, what happened to you? Here she is, Katherine, working on the typewriter. What made you run away, Vic?”

“Shy,” replied Victoria, as she slowly fingered the keys.

“Nonsense!” said Katherine. “It was something else, Vic. You never were shy in your life.”

“Frightened, then,” said Victoria.

“Frightened? What at?”

“Miss Madison’s big brother.” Which was certainly the truth.

“Vic, how absurd!” cried Katherine. “He is just as nice as he can be. Wasn’t it too ridiculous that we should have supposed that he was a small boy of Peter’s age? We had a great laugh over it, and I was really glad that we had made the mistake, for it was such a joke it quite broke the ice. I feel as if I had known them both for years, don’t you, Honor?”

“Yes, they are very nice, both of them,” replied her sister, “and I am very glad, girls, that you made me go there to call. After all, it would have been silly to hold aloof from them just because we are poor. I don’t think they are at all the kind to look down on us because we are—”

“Of course not,” said Katherine with some impatience. “They are true gentle-people, and not in the least snobbish. The mother is lovely, Vic.”

“Is she?”

Victoria bent over her machine, examining the result of her labor. She was indeed glad that she had decided not to divulge her secret, now that she heard what a pleasant impression the new neighbors had made, especially upon Honor; but she wished that she were at liberty to enjoy their society herself.

“I am doing this quite nicely,” said she, taking out the paper and showing it to her sisters.

“Why, so you are!” exclaimed Katherine. “I had no idea you would learn so quickly, though you have spelled some of these words in a new and rather remarkable way. But, Vic, how funny you are! You were wild to have us call on the Madisons, and apparently most anxious to go there yourself, and now you seem to take so little interest in them, and you rushed away after you were actually in the house. It was a frightfully rude thing to do, and they didn’t know what to make of it. Honor and I had the greatest time explaining to them.”

“What did you tell them?” asked Victoria.

“Oh, we said that you were very busy, as you were still at school, and had probably remembered some lesson, or something that you hadn’t done. We were perfectly at a loss to know what to say, weren’t we, Honor?”

“Yes. It was really rude, Vic. I think you ought to apologize to Miss Madison. You had better go there very soon and explain, though I can’t imagine what you are going to tell her. It will be rather peculiar to say that you were frightened. They are coming here very soon and perhaps you can make it right then.”

“All of them?” asked Victoria.

“No; only Miss Madison and her brother. Mrs. Madison is an invalid and doesn’t go anywhere, but they are coming.”

Victoria groaned in spirit, but she made no audible comment, and presently her sisters left her. She would now have a difficult road to travel, she said to herself. She must watch with increasing vigilance and promptly disappear if there was the slightest chance of meeting Roger Madison. She was leaning back in her chair, pondering the situation, her brow puckered by the deep thought in which she was engaged, when Peter entered the room, followed closely by Sophy and Sirius.

Since the day last week when he had deserted Sophy in the woods Peter had been unusually attentive to his small sister. He had said little upon the subject, but he had thought about it, and he undoubtedly felt some remorse for his share in the events of that afternoon. It was very stupid of Sophy to have allowed herself to lose her way, he thought, but then she was only a girl and a little one at that. What else could one expect of so benighted an individual? And he was fond of Sophy after a fashion, he said to himself with superb condescension, and was sorry that she had been frightened. Therefore he had allowed her to bear him company more constantly than usual during the past few days, and Sophy was in the seventh heaven of delight in consequence.

At the present moment they were engaged in a spirited discussion, which was not uncommon, or, to be more exact, Peter was in the act of laying down the law to Sophy, this being one of his favorite pastimes.

“You are a perfect little goose, Sophy! I can’t imagine what you are thinking of. A wheelwright! I told you the other day what I was going to do. Have you forgotten already? Your memory isn’t worth a cent. But what else can you expect of a girl?”

Sophy became visibly depressed.

“I wish I could remember, Peter,” she said, searching in the depths of her memory for Peter’s words of wisdom too precious to be lost. “Did you tell me long ago?”

“Not long ago, at all. It was the day you got scared in the woods. If you remember, don’t say anything, for Vic is here, and you know it’s a secret. Don’t you know the thing that’s going to have nothing about girls? Well, no matter. All the less chance of the secret’s getting out if you’ve forgotten it. What do you suppose Sophy wants me to be, when I’m grown up, Vic?”

“I can’t imagine,” said Victoria. “A clergyman?”

“No, indeed. The most ridiculous thing you ever heard of: a wheelwright!”

“A wheelwright?” repeated Victoria. “Where in the world did you get that idea, child?”

Sophy looked ready to cry. She felt that it was hard, indeed, that even her beloved Vic should question her sagacity.

“I only meant because it’s so safe,” she faltered. “I do want Peter to do something he won’t be killed in. I didn’t think about the clergyman. He could be that, of course, and not be killed. But my history lesson this morning was all about wars and battles, and I felt so worried about Peter, in case he should be a soldier or a sailor when he grows up. The soldiers get shot, and the sailors get drownded, and I was thinking of the safest thing he could be, and it was a wheelwright. They just have to mend wagons and carriages; and Peter likes to mend things up in the shop, you know. It is safer than a blacksmith, for a horse might kick a blacksmith, you know, and perhaps kill him.”

Peter roared with laughter, and even Victoria had to raise her hand to her mouth to hide a smile; but she saw that Sophy was very much in earnest, and she would not hurt her feelings for the world. Peter’s laugh, however, was the finishing touch. Sophy hid her face in her sister’s lap, and her small shoulders shook with sobs.

“You’re real mean!” she cried. “I only want to save your life. You’re my only brother!”

Victoria frowned fiercely at Peter while she endeavored to soothe Sophy, and Peter himself felt a little remorseful for his unfeeling mirth. He attempted to mend matters.

“I’m laughing at Sirius!” he exclaimed. “Isn’t he too absurd? Sirius, you ridiculous dog, ha! ha! ha! Oh, Sophy—I mean Sirius, how funny you are!”

Upon which Sirius in his turn was sorely offended. With lowered tail and with an appearance of great dejection, he crept under the sofa. Like the rest of his race he disliked being laughed at, and he felt that he had done nothing to subject himself to such an insult. He had been lying at his master’s feet, quite sound asleep, and no doubt enjoying the dream of an entrancing walk in the woods, when he had been recalled to real life by this extravagant burst of laughter mingled with the sound of his own name. Truly he had a right to feel aggrieved. And sitting in the most remote corner beneath the sofa he thought over his wrongs.

“After all, your idea is not such a bad one, Sophy,” said Victoria. “You are quite right about it being better for Peter to do something safe; but I don’t think wheelwrights make a great deal of money, and as Peter is the only man in our family, it is rather necessary that he should earn as much as possible. By the way, Peter, do you know where Dave is this afternoon?”

“No, I can’t find him. He must be off somewhere.”

“Where do you suppose he goes?”

“I don’t know, I’m sure,” said Peter, indifferently. “Perhaps he goes down to see his people in Fordham.”

“Perhaps he goes to walk with that brother,” suggested Sophy, who had dried her eyes and quickly recovered from her recent mortification. “He isn’t a nice brother, though, and he talked regular swear-words. I shouldn’t think Dave would like him to do it.”

“Neither should I,” said Victoria, “and I wish he wouldn’t go off so much. I think Honor had better speak to him. Even though we have another man at work, he needs Dave’s help if we are going to make anything out of the vegetables.”

The girls had determined to turn their garden to account this summer, and to send their vegetables and perhaps some of their fruit to the markets for sale. They had engaged a gardener for the purpose, and although his wages took a large slice of their earnings, they had decided after consulting with Mr. Abbott that it would be a wise thing to do. Mr. Abbott had been ill the greater part of the winter and had been unable to come to Glen Arden for several months, but his wards heard from him frequently, and they seldom undertook any important project without asking his advice.

“I will speak to Honor about it now,” continued Victoria. “Come, Sophy! Come with me, and then we’ll go down to the garden afterwards and see how things are going there. Fortunately it is Friday, so we have no lessons to learn.”

Leaving Peter to conciliate the offended Sirius as best he could, Victoria and Sophy went upstairs.

The following week passed quickly enough, and all too soon came the day before that on which Mrs. Wentworth Ward was to descend upon them. Katherine, in spite of the entreaties of her sisters, had deferred until the last possible moment her removal to another room. At length, however, further delay became out of the question, and on Wednesday evening she announced that she should begin to remove her effects to the third story if her family would assist in the operation.

Peter and Victoria had each offered to take the third-story apartment and give either of theirs on the second floor to Katherine if she desired, but she had finally decided that she preferred to go up herself. There were two rooms there with a square hall between, and she rather fancied the idea of having a whole suite to herself, where she would be quite free from interruption or criticism. It was not probable that her Aunt Sophia would often mount those steep stairs, she thought.

“If we get everything moved up to-night, B. Lafferty can clean my room to-morrow, and it will be all ready for our dear aunt by the time she arrives,” said Katherine. So after supper the four girls ascended and began the task of “moving” Katherine.

Peter took no part in the proceedings, but retired to the “shop,” where he had some work in which he was interested. Very soon they were all actively engaged, one carrying skirts and hats, another staggering under a pile of boxes, still another rummaging in the depths of the closet, bringing to light all sorts of things which Katherine had stowed away there in some remote period of the past, and had apparently forgotten. Occasionally Honor or Victoria would pause in dismay as some new article appeared which they did not know that Katherine possessed.

“Where did you get that, Katherine?” they asked more than once.

“Oh, I bought it a long time ago, when we had more money. Not this winter of course, girls. I really thought I needed it at the time, and it is so pretty.”

Sophy enjoyed the experience to the utmost. She had always longed to investigate Katherine’s possessions, which she knew to be more interesting than those of her other sisters, but she had never hitherto been allowed this privilege. Now that the desired opportunity had come, she determined to make the most of it. Unheeded by her busy sisters, she sat on the floor and explored box after box of ribbons, and odds and ends of finery, feeling that at last the millennium was here.

It occurred to Victoria’s frugal mind, as she glanced from the gallery to the hall below during one of her trips to the third story, that it was scarcely worth while to have so much light downstairs, as there was no one there to make use of it. Surely it was extravagant to burn so much oil unnecessarily, so without mentioning it to the others, who would have been sure to expostulate, she ran down and put out the lamps, at the same time bolting the front door and attending to the fastenings of the windows. Then she went upstairs again and continued her work.

Ten minutes later the sound of the door-bell was heard through the house. Sirius, who had been lying at the head of the stairs, broke into loud and furious barking and rushed to the front door. The girls looked at one another in consternation.

“Who can it be at this hour?” exclaimed Honor. “It must be very late.”

“It is only a little after eight,” said Victoria, “and all the lights are out downstairs! Hurry and fix yourselves up, girls! Blanch, Blanch, wait!” she exclaimed in an agitated whisper as the maid’s heavy footsteps were heard in the hall below. Victoria flew down the stairs almost as quickly as Sirius had gone.

“Don’t open the door till I light the lamps,” she said.

CHAPTER XII.

ROGER MADISON TELLS A STORY.

IT did not really take long to light the lamps, but to Victoria it seemed an age. Matches broke in her hand as she struck them, her trembling fingers allowed a chimney to slip from their grasp to be dashed in a thousand atoms upon the floor, and in the meantime she heard voices upon the piazza, while Blanch, standing close to the front door, asked her in loud and penetrating tones if she were not yet ready to have it opened.

At last, signalling to her that the time had come to admit the visitors, whoever they might be, Victoria disappeared through the door which led to the back of the house and listened at its crack while Blanch drew back the bolts with a clatter and noisily turned the key in the lock.

“Are the young ladies at home?” she heard a voice ask which she felt sure was Miss Madison’s. She hoped devoutly that Blanch’s reply would be a discreet one. Unfortunately Blanch was so apt to be loquacious.

“Yes’m, they’re home,” replied B. Lafferty, “but I guess they’ve gone to bed. The lights was all out, but Miss Vic come down an’ lit ’em. I’ll see if the others is up.”

Victoria groaned aloud. All her ingenuity had been of no avail, and Blanch had capped the unfortunate climax by speaking of her as “Miss Vic!”

“Oh, we have come too late!” exclaimed Miss Madison. “I was afraid that we were. We will come another time. Don’t disturb them now.”

“All right,” returned Blanch, affably. “Just as you say, mum.”

Victoria felt ready to dart from her hiding-place and detain the visitors by force, but at that moment Honor’s light step was heard upon the stairs.

“We haven’t gone to bed at all,” said she, “and are delighted to see you. We were upstairs this evening, and some one put out the lamps by mistake.”

And then a man’s voice was heard, and Victoria knew that the dreaded Roger was also there. She hastened up the back stairs as Katherine in her turn went down the front, and proceeded to devote herself to finishing the task of the evening, congratulating herself that she had not been caught.

Sophy meanwhile had disappeared, and Victoria in thinking over the excitement of the last few minutes completely forgot her. In fact, she supposed that she was in bed as she usually was at this hour. The little girl, however, had been engaged in making hay while the sun shone. In other words, she had retired to the room which she shared with Victoria, and had taken with her a large box of treasures which she had abstracted from Katherine’s belongings, in which she proceeded to array herself.

Upon her head she placed a wreath of artificial roses from an old hat of Katherine’s, which, owing to her short hair, it was a difficult matter to adjust. Finally, however, this was arranged to her satisfaction, and she then draped about her shoulders a large white lace scarf, which she fastened at one side with an immense bow of yellow satin. Katherine when she wore colors had been fond of brilliant ones, and was constantly buying all varieties of flowers, ribbons, and what not for her personal adornment. Just as Sophy had finished thus decking herself had come the flurry which ensued upon the ringing of the door-bell, and then the girls had gone down to receive the visitors.

Sophy had heard so much of these new neighbors during the last few days that she was most desirous of seeing them. She had walked past the house on the hill more than once in the hope that her curiosity might be gratified, but to no avail. Now they were actually in the house. It was too good an opportunity to let slip. Shortly after Victoria came up the back stairs, Sophy crept down by the same route. Softly she opened the door which led to the front of the house and stealthily she took her way into the square hall.

A screen usually stood near the door at the back of the parlor. She hoped that she should find it there now, and that no one would be sitting at that end of the parlor. In that case she could peep from behind the screen or perhaps through its crack. She found to her satisfaction that the screen was there, and that her sisters with their guests were sitting at the farther end of the room,—it was a large one with two doors,—and she immediately placed herself in a position from which she fancied that she could command a view of the room without being perceived herself. She was also pleased to discover that her sisters were sitting with their backs to her, while their visitors faced her. She could thus see exactly what they looked like.

Mr. Madison was telling Katherine a story. It appeared to be an interesting tale as well as an amusing one, for Katherine was laughing heartily, and presently Honor and Miss Madison gave up their conversation and listened also. Sophy, thinking the crack unsatisfactory and growing bolder, peered around the corner of the screen for a second at a time. She found it a fascinating pursuit.

Mr. Madison continued his story. It was a favorite one with him, and he had seldom found more appreciative listeners than the two Miss Starrs. He was approaching his point, leading up to it with the skill of an accomplished storyteller when—what was that? His eye caught something that moved, at the other end of the room. Probably the dog which had barked upon their arrival and had since disappeared. He continued his tale, but there it was again! Surely it was no dog that he saw, but pink roses, yellow ribbon, white lace, appearing, vanishing, and reappearing from behind the screen.

He faltered for a moment in the story, and his sister wondered what was the matter. She looked at him, and then followed his glance. It was resting upon an extraordinary vision. A small pale face, with large brown eyes wide open with wonder at the tale, the face surmounted by a wreath of pink roses, was thrust from behind the screen. Roger controlled his amusement with difficulty, and brought the story to an abrupt termination.

“Is that really true?” asked a voice from the back of the room when the laughter had ceased.

The sisters turned. There stood Sophy in her fantastic costume, emerging boldly from her hiding-place and bent as usual upon probing the truth of the story to the core.

“Is it true?” she repeated.

“Why, Sophy!” exclaimed Honor and Katherine together. “What are you doing there? What have you got on? And why aren’t you in bed?”

“I want to know if that story is true.”

It was always impossible to turn Sophy from the subject which at the moment chanced to absorb her.

“I’m afraid it isn’t,” replied Roger Madison, laughing, “but if you will come over here, I will tell you one that is.”

“Sophy, you ought to be in bed,” said Honor, severely. “I can’t imagine what you mean by coming down to the parlor dressed up in those extraordinary things.”

“I didn’t know they were strordinary, Honor. I thought they were pretty. They’re Kathie’s things,” she continued, for the benefit of the visitors, “out of her boxes. We’re moving Kathie to the third story ’cause Aunt Sophia’s coming to-morrow. Kathie has to give up her room to her, but she doesn’t want to.”

“Sophy!” exclaimed Honor, in a tone of warning, while the Madisons laughed aloud.

“It is perfectly true, Honor. You know Kathie said at first she wouldn’t.”

Honor rose to her feet, but Katherine concluded that the better plan would be to laugh off a situation which was rapidly becoming awkward.

“It is quite true,” she said. “Our small sister has let the cat out of the bag, and we may as well tell you the rest. Our aunt, Mrs. Wentworth Ward, is coming to-morrow to stay all summer, and I didn’t want to give up my room at all, but she wanted it and—well, Aunt Sophia usually has what she wants.”

“I don’t wonder you were busy to-night, then,” said Miss Madison, who liked Katherine all the better for her frankness. She was about to say more when Sophy’s solemn voice was again heard.

“Kathie, I don’t know what you mean. We haven’t any cat. You know we can’t have one on account of Sirius, and so I couldn’t possibly let it out of a bag. I think you’re making up a story, Kathie.”

This speech was received with such shouts of laughter that Sophy fled from the room and up to Victoria, who was listening at the head of the stairs. She had missed Sophy, and, after looking for her in vain, had finally detected her whereabouts. Now she received her weeping sister, and led her to the safe seclusion of their own room.

“I think you are a very interesting family,” said Miss Madison, when she and her brother finally rose to take leave. “Don’t scold Sophy for coming down, will you? I take it as a great compliment that she wanted to see us. We have yet to meet your brother and the sister who disappeared so suddenly the other day. Please be very neighborly, for I like you,” she added, “and, Miss Katherine, perhaps you will come up Monday afternoon and bring some of your music. I long to play with you. I should be glad to have your sisters come, too. Good night.”

“What must they think of us?” exclaimed Honor, when the front door was finally shut. “The whole affair was too dreadful.”

“I don’t think so at all,” said Katherine. “It was all very funny from beginning to end, and they are just the kind of people to take it nicely. But did you ever see such a sight as Sophy! Fancy her taking all my precious things!”

“Fancy her coming down and listening in that way,” said Honor. “It was perfectly dreadful.”

“Don’t scold her about it,” said Victoria, who had joined them. “She has been crying so hard, and she is waiting for you to come to bid her good night, Honor. She didn’t know it wasn’t the right thing to do, but I’ve been explaining to her. She was crazy to see the Madisons, and she forgot she had those things on. I was rather curious myself to know what you were talking about when I heard such a jolly time going on down here.”

“Why didn’t you come down?” asked Katherine. “They both asked for you.”

“Too busy,” replied her sister. “I’ve finished moving you. If I hadn’t stayed upstairs, we should have had to be up all night, or you never would have been ready for Aunt Sophia.”

The next afternoon Peter announced his intention of going off to the woods. He was interested in a pair of birds that had made their nest in a certain tree, and whenever he had a spare moment he went to the woods to watch them. He had declined to take Sophy with him to-day, giving as his reason that she talked too much.

“You can’t see a thing in the woods,” he said wisely, “if a girl’s along. They always chatter, chatter, chatter, like a squirrel. When Carney and I go together, we don’t say a word, and pretty soon all the creatures come out and attend to their business just as they would if we weren’t there. Creatures are awfully afraid of people. You know you never see anything about when you just go walking through the woods. They all stay in their holes and nests. But if you just go sit there and watch and don’t make a sound, they begin to come out, and it’s lots of fun. I’ll take Sirius because he minds me and keeps quiet when I tell him to, but it’s no good to say that to Sophy.”

“Why, Peter,” said Sophy, in an injured tone, “I won’t say a word if you don’t want me to. You tell me things when we are out walking, and then I have to answer, but I won’t if you’ll only let me go.”

“I really think you ought to stay at home this afternoon, Sophy,” interposed Honor. “You know Aunt Sophia is coming, and she will be disappointed if her namesake isn’t here to receive her.”

“I wish I hadn’t been named after her,” remarked Sophy, with an aggrieved air. “It’s an awful bother. When you’re named for people you always have to do things you don’t want to. Now there’s Peter can go to the woods this afternoon. He couldn’t if he was named for Aunt Sophia.”

“What a big goose you are!” said Peter. “As if a boy could have been named Sophia!”

“I wish you would do a little weeding before you go, Peter,” said Honor.

“And if you could only help me move some of the furniture in my new room,” added Katherine. “I can’t get it fixed to suit me at all, and it is so heavy. Can’t you, Peter?”

“Oh, goodness,” said Peter, “what a bother! I suppose I’ve got to move the furniture, but the weeding will have to wait. I tell you, I must go to the woods this afternoon. Hurry up, now, if you want me upstairs.” And he ran off himself two steps at a time.

Katherine was hard to please, and half an hour at least was consumed before the furniture was arranged to her satisfaction. Peter in consequence became more and more ill-tempered, and when she paused in the midst of her directions to tell him that his hands were not particularly clean and that his collar was frayed at the edge, he lost all patience.

“Who cares whether my hands are clean or not for moving your old furniture,” said he; “and if the collar is frayed at the edge, what made you put it in my drawer when it came out of the wash? It’s your own fault, and speaking of washing hands, I wash mine of this old sofa.”

And he departed, leaving the sofa in the middle of the room for Katherine to move alone as best she could.

Peter and Sirius took their way across the woody pasture beyond the barn and the garden. It was indeed good to be out of doors on such a day as this, and there was no knowing what of interest might be in store for them. Katherine’s criticisms were soon forgotten, and master and dog were happy in each other’s company and in the indefinable something which pervaded the atmosphere this afternoon of the first of May and which filled the hearts of both with a sense of elation.

It was an ideal May day, warm and balmy. The songs of the lately arrived birds filled the air; active little chipmunks, awakened from their winter’s sleep, darted here and there with amazing fleetness, while the frogs croaked loudly on the river bank, rejoicing that spring had come.

Suddenly Sirius darted forward in swift pursuit of a little creature which had ventured forth from its home shortly before and had been unmindful of the approach of two such hereditary enemies as a boy and a dog. Quickly though Sirius ran, however, the little animal, having the start, and becoming conscious at once that it was being pursued, darted away and was lost to sight.

“It was a weasel, I verily believe,” exclaimed Peter aloud, running in great excitement to the spot where it had disappeared. “Sirius, why didn’t you catch him? It is the one that has been killing our chickens.”

Sirius was beside himself with rage and disappointment. There was enough of the terrier in his nature to make him feel that a weasel was his lawful prey, and he jumped madly about the stump where the weasel had disappeared, barking, digging in the ground, and nosing in every direction.

“Yes, I do believe it lives here, Sirius,” said Peter. “We’ll get him yet. Here’s a little passage-way among the roots of the stump. We’ll dig out the nest as soon as we get a chance, Sirius. I saw a weasel’s nest once, dug it out, and it was as cosy as possible, lined with dead leaves and grass and feathers and a snake’s skin. We don’t want any more dead chickens lying with holes in their necks, indeed we don’t. Come on now, sir! We’re going to the woods.”

They continued their walk, Sirius leaving the stump sorely against his will, and going back to it again and again; and finally they reached the thicker woods where Sophy had lost her way on the memorable occasion when the owl had shrieked and had so sorely frightened her.

“I wish I could find that owl to-day, but I don’t believe he lives in these woods,” thought Peter. “I will look for him before I go watch those other birds. I believe that was the big tree where the owl was sitting when it yelled.”

He walked quietly to the spot, and seating himself on a fallen tree he ordered Sirius to be quiet. Nothing living was to be seen. The new leaves upon the trees were not very thick as yet, and the afternoon sun shone warmly through them, resting in patches on the undergrowth. With his hand on the dog’s collar Peter sat and waited.

Presently a gray squirrel moved cautiously along a branch, sitting quite still for a moment to watch them with mingled curiosity and anxiety, and then, finding these strangers so motionless and apparently so harmless, approaching quite near to them. It was hard for Sirius to remain quiet with so entrancing an object of pursuit within easy reach, but he had been well trained and, above all, he loved Peter, and was not Peter’s hand upon his collar?

Very soon the gray squirrel became tired of looking at them and ran away, and in the meantime Peter had discovered something in the tall tree which he had been watching. About forty feet above him was a hole as large as his own head, and standing on the edge of this hole was an owl. At first Peter had not been able to distinguish it, for it was of a mottled brown, and so like the bark of the tree in color that the difference could at first glance be scarcely detected. He was quite sure, however, that it had not been there when he arrived upon the spot. Neither did he think that it was the same owl that had given the strange cry the other day. This seemed like a little screech owl. He made some slight noise, breaking some twigs from the log on which he was sitting, and in a flash the owl disappeared within the hole and was seen no more that afternoon.

Peter sat here until he was tired, watching a snake which twisted its way through the dead leaves, the gray squirrels which ran about now in confidence, fancying themselves perfectly secure, and some birds that had nested in a tree not far away. He hoped that the snake would not reach the birds’ nest and steal the eggs, but it was early in the season yet, and snakes were still sluggish in their movements. He knew that the owls were secure, for their eggs had been hatched some time since, and the young ones were probably well grown. Indeed, there was a possibility that the other birds, if they escaped the snake, might fall a prey to the owls that lived in such close proximity, and that would be only too ready to pounce upon and devour them at the first opportunity.

At last Peter rose from the log, and releasing Sirius with a commendatory pat for his good behavior, he walked off through the woods. There was a sudden rustle in boughs and underbrush, frightened bird notes sounded from the branches, shrill squirrel warnings came from the trunks of trees. All the creatures, which had supposed themselves safe, were terrified by these unexpected movements on the part of the two hitherto motionless objects that had been there so long, and quickly gave notice to their companions that danger was abroad in the forest.

But Peter and Sirius left them unmolested, and continued their way to the outskirts of the wood. It was later than Peter had supposed, but he determined to take a still longer walk and to go home by a round-about way which could be shortened at the end by coming up the branch railroad which led directly through their place.

He was walking quickly over this railroad, and was crossing a bridge which was above the river, when his foot caught on one of the ties, and he slipped between them. Something seemed to snap in his leg, and then a blackness came over him. Strange surging noises sounded in his ears, and he knew no more.

CHAPTER XIII.

PETER MEETS WITH A SERIOUS ACCIDENT.

ON the same afternoon upon which Mrs. Wentworth Ward was to arrive at Glen Arden, and which Peter spent in the woods, Roger Madison came home on an early train from Boston and invited his sister to go out on the river with him. Although Margaret was fully ten years older than himself, and therefore had been grown up when he was still a small boy, she had always been his dearest companion. They rode and drove and fished together, they played and sang, they read the same books and loved the same pictures, and the pleasure which came to one was deprived of half its value if it were not shared by the other.

On this May day therefore they were both more than content with their lot when, Margaret being comfortably placed in the canoe, Roger stepped in and pushed away from the shore.

“Up or down shall it be, Margaret?” he asked.

“Either. Anything is charming, even if we were to stay exactly where we are.”

“As you are so agreeable to anything, I think we will go up river. There are not apt to be so many people about there as there are in the neighborhood of Waterview and below. The river is wilder, too. What a beautiful winding stream the Charles is!”

He paddled quietly up stream, and they talked or not as they felt inclined, and drank in the sweet-scented air, and watched the turtles sunning themselves on the rocks, and listened to the hoarse croaking of the bullfrogs. Finally, as the sun sank in the west, they turned and floated down with the current.

“Those Starrs are very interesting girls, I think,” remarked Roger after a silence that had lasted for some moments. “Miss Katherine is very handsome, but the elder one’s face is very lovely. She is not as strictly beautiful perhaps, but her expression is such a noble one.”

“Katherine is more interesting to me,” said his sister; “I like Honor immensely, but she is more conventional than Katherine and more self-controlled. Katherine is full of fire and enthusiasm, and I like it. Plenty of faults, no doubt, but whole souled. Honor is charming, though, too.”

“They seem very jolly and have plenty of fun in them. How amusing it was last night.”

“Very; I like both the girls very much, and I am curious to meet the other one, Victoria, or Vic, as they call her. Though she is so young, she seems to be a moving spirit in the family. I wonder why we haven’t met her anywhere.”

“Apparently because she runs away from us. I was sure last evening that I caught a glimpse of some one peeping through the door at the back of the hall when that amiable maid of theirs was telling us that they had gone to bed,” said Roger, laughing at the recollection.

“It must be trying for them to give up so much and work so hard when they have been accustomed to such a different life,” said his sister. “Did you notice the pictures?”.

“Yes. They were chosen by some one with very good judgment. There were one or two water-colors on the wall that were excellent, and some fine etchings. I saw two by the same man who did the one that I gave you at Christmas, Margaret.”

“The one you bought of the girl in the picture store? I feel a special interest in that picture, Roger. I am forever imagining what kind of a girl she must have been and how she came to do that.”

“Because she had to, I suppose. She was a nice-looking little thing, and she was a lady. Not exactly pretty, but her face was interesting. I saw a photograph at the Starrs’ last night that reminded me of her. I meant to have told you.”

“I have a feeling that we shall see her again some day, because I am so deeply interested in her,” said Miss Madison, musingly. “I don’t think I could feel so about a person whom I am never to see. But what a keen-sighted person you are, Roger! Without appearing to look about, you seem to have absorbed every picture in that room. I daresay you could tell me the titles of all the books in the cases and the music in the music racks!”

“As well as the number of roses in that child’s wreath,” said Roger, laughing; “I wouldn’t have missed that sight for the world. What’s the matter with that dog?” he asked suddenly.

They were about to pass under a railroad bridge not far from their own home. Standing on the bridge, very near the edge and almost falling over in his efforts to make himself heard, was an ungainly-looking yellow dog. He was barking madly, occasionally varying the sound by piteous whines and yelps of entreaty. Roger paused and looked up.

“What’s the matter, old fellow?” he said kindly. “You had better get off the track. You will be run over, for it is almost time for a train.”

Upon hearing his friendly voice, the dog darted from the bridge and came running and tumbling down the steep bank to the river’s edge, where he renewed his barks and yelping, turning to run up the bank a little way and then looking back to see if Roger were coming.

“Something must be the matter, Roger,” said Miss Madison; “do go and see! A dog wouldn’t behave that way unless there was some trouble.”

Roger pushed up to shore, and then handing the paddle to his sister he jumped out and scrambled up the bank, the dog pausing for a moment to leap about with delight and then running before, stopping at intervals, however, to make sure that his new friend was close behind.

The bank was high and steep, but when the top was at last reached, Roger Madison saw immediately the cause of the dog’s excitement. Upon the bridge, and lying between the rails with his face down, was the figure of a boy. The dog ran to him and licked his hands and ears, which were the only parts of him that were visible. Then he turned to Roger, whining piteously again, and at that moment was heard the whistle of a train that was leaving Waterview for its trip over the branch road. In less than two minutes it would reach the bridge.

Madison attempted to raise the boy, only to find that his foot was caught between the rail and one of the sleepers in some curious way. He must move him cautiously or he would do him injury. Far below was the river, and the boy was lying half-way across the bridge. There was but a single track here; it would be necessary to carry him to one end or the other, and the train was coming. There was no chance that the engineer would see him in time to stop, for it was growing dark rapidly, and there was a curve in the road shortly before this part of it was reached. Should he never be able to extricate the boy’s foot?

At last it was free. Standing on the narrow bridge through the openings of which the river beneath seemed so far away, and with the puff of the engine drawing nearer and nearer, Roger raised the lad in his arms and then ran with him to the farther bank. As he stepped from one end of the bridge the train reached the other, and in a second more it passed him as he stood by the track, his burden in his arms.

But what was the heart-rending cry which sounded in his ears as the train rolled by? What had happened? Roger Madison, strong man though he was, felt almost faint at the thought. Had the dog saved his master’s life only to lose his own? It could not be.

But it was so. Sirius had not stirred from Peter’s side until he saw him in a place of security; what happened afterwards no one ever knew. Probably in his ecstasy at the boy’s safety he had forgotten his own danger and jumped back upon the track; but whatever the cause, the train passed over him. He lost his life in saving the beloved master who had once rescued him from a cruel death. And who, whether dog or man, can ask for a more glorious end than this?

In the meantime Miss Madison, surmising that something serious was the matter, had left the canoe drawn up upon the bank, and had herself climbed up to the top. She reached it soon after the train had passed and found her brother bending over the still form of the boy, who lay by the side of the railroad.

“Who do you suppose it is, Margaret?” said he. “We had better take him to the Starrs’. It is the nearest house.”

“It may be Peter Starr, Roger!” exclaimed Miss Madison. “I shouldn’t wonder at all if it were, and he looks something like them, as well as I can see in this light. He has a dog, you know.”

“He has one no longer, then,” said Roger, briefly. “The dog is dead.”

“Roger, how terrible! What will the poor boy say? But I had better run before and prepare them. Roger, are you sure the boy is alive?”

But even as she spoke, the lad stirred slightly and opened his eyes.

“Sirius,” he murmured faintly; “come here, sir!” Then he lost consciousness again.

“It is Peter Starr,” said Margaret. “The dog’s name was Sirius. Follow slowly, Roger. You must give me time to prepare them.”

She ran through the woods which bordered on the river bank, and then emerging upon the open lawn, she hastened towards the house. Apparently the family were at supper, for no one was to be seen. Miss Madison opened the front door without ceremony, and greatly to the astonishment of the Starrs—including Mrs. Ward—appeared at the door of the dining-room.

“Is your brother at home?” she asked breathlessly. Though she tried to speak calmly, it was easy to see that something was the matter.

“No,” said Honor, “we were just wondering—Miss Madison, what is it?” She pushed back her chair and rose to her feet, as did also Katherine and Victoria. A certainty that something serious had taken place filled the hearts of all.

“What is it?” said they together.

“Don’t look so frightened,” said Miss Madison. “He isn’t dead; he is only hurt a little, and Roger is bringing him. We found him. See; they are coming now.”

They looked across the lawn, and saw Roger Madison moving towards the house with a burden in his arms. Could it be Peter? Madison, who was tall and very strong, carried him as easily as he would have carried a child of five, although Peter was tall for his age and was no light weight.

“Some one get a bed ready for him,” said Margaret, “and send at once for a doctor. In the meantime I will help you. I know a little about surgery.”

Honor and Katherine had run to meet their brother, but Victoria was ready to do what she was told.

“Aunt Sophia, please send Dave Carney for the doctor,” said she. “He is in the kitchen, I think. I will go upstairs.”

“And I will go with you,” said Miss Madison.

It was much later in the evening, and Peter was now quite comfortable. The doctor had gone after having set the broken leg and having assured the Starrs that, although the injury was serious, there was nothing about it which need alarm them. The Madisons went home after the doctor came, but Roger intended to return to inquire for the patient. As yet, nothing had been said about the fate of Sirius. Peter had been asking for him ever since he regained consciousness, and his sisters, supposing the dog to be at the barn, had promised to give him his supper. The doctor had left orders that Peter should be kept very quiet, and that Sirius should not be admitted to his room.

Honor was with her brother now, and Katherine and Victoria were in their aunt’s room. She had arrived by the designated train that afternoon, accompanied by her maid, her canaries, and several trunks. The bustle which her coming had caused had scarcely subsided before supper was announced, and then had ensued the excitement about Peter. Now, at half-past eight, she had requested the attendance of Katherine and Victoria in her room while she unpacked and settled herself for the summer.

“I want to talk over your affairs,” said she. “Now that I am really here I wish to be right in your midst. What have you been living on? How much have you made in that ridiculous school and those senseless violets? Why people should spend their money on violets I can’t imagine. They only fade.”

“Don’t you think we had better wait until to-morrow?” suggested Victoria, mildly, as she watched her aunt’s energetic movements about the room. Mrs. Ward had made it clear to them in the beginning that she wished no assistance in her unpacking.

“Then you could talk to Honor about it,” continued Victoria, “and to-night we are so worried about Peter.”

“No need for worry,” rejoined Mrs. Wentworth Ward, briskly. “The boy is in no danger, the doctor said. How he ever got into such a predicament I can’t imagine. If your friends the Madisons hadn’t happened along just when they did—”

“Oh, Aunt Sophia, don’t!” cried Victoria. “It is too horrible to put into words. How can we ever thank the Madisons enough!”

“Do you know how they happened to find him?”

“No, we haven’t heard,” said Victoria, while Katherine added:

“Mr. Madison said he would come back later and tell us all about it.”

“Humph!” said her aunt, looking at her shrewdly while she shook out and refolded her garments. “Who are these Madisons?”

“Very nice people,” replied Katherine, with exaggerated indifference.

“So you seem to find them, and they apparently take an active part in your household affairs. I was amused at Miss Madison! Running upstairs without ever saying ‘by your leave’! But if they are related to the Roger Madisons, they are all that one would wish.”

“The brother’s name is Roger,” said Victoria.

“Oh,” remarked Mrs. Wentworth Ward, “then I have nothing to say.”

“After saving Peter’s life I think they are at liberty to do anything they like,” said Katherine, with the asperity which intercourse with her aunt never failed to bring to the surface. “And if they were not the Roger Madisons, what would you have to say, Aunt Sophia?”

Victoria, dreading an argument, abruptly turned the conversation by introducing the matter of the typewriter. It was, perhaps, a case of leaping from the frying-pan into the fire, but she felt that anything would be preferable to a lengthy discussion of the Madisons between her aunt and Katherine, who never, under any circumstances, were known to agree, and who each possessed to the last degree the power of irritating the other.

Sophy, meanwhile, had been shut out completely both from Peter’s room and from that of her aunt. She had been told by her sisters to go to bed, but as they had failed to enforce the command, she had not yet obeyed it. Instead, she wandered disconsolately over the house, even seeking Blanch in the kitchen, although she was not a favorite with the child. Sophy was discriminating, and her prejudices were strong.

She found Blanch engaged in a spirited discussion with the lately arrived maid from Beacon Street, and her presence was so completely ignored by them both, that she left the kitchen and returned to the main part of the house.

Glancing from the window at the side of the front door, she saw Mr. Madison approaching, and she opened the door and gladly welcomed him.

“Won’t you come and talk to me?” she said in a forlorn little voice. “I’m all alone. I can’t go to Peter’s room, and I can’t find Sirius, and Aunt Sophia doesn’t want me. Don’t you think if somebody was named for you, you’d like to have ’em in your room when you were unpacking?”

“Indeed I should!” said Madison, seating himself in the parlor, while Sophy took another chair and prepared to entertain him, after the manner, as she thought, of her elder sisters when they had visitors.

“And Aunt Sophia is unpacking,” she continued, “and unpacking is such a very interesting thing to watch. I think she is asking questions, too. Aunt Sophia asks a great many questions. When I do, the girls say I’m curious, but they can’t say that to Aunt Sophia.”

“No, scarcely!” said Mr. Madison, who was greatly amused with his small hostess, but preserved a perfectly straight face.

“She thinks we ought to live with her, but we don’t want to. We would rather work for our living, and so we teach school and give music lessons and sell mushrooms and violets, and once Vic went to Boston and sold some gold things and some—oh, but I forgot! The girls told me not to tell anybody that.”

“No,” said Roger, gravely; “you had better not.”

“Perhaps when we get to know you very well, we’ll tell you all about what the man said to Vic, the young man—”

“Do you think I can see one of your sisters?” asked he, interrupting her. “I want to speak about Peter, and—well, to explain to them how I happened to find him. Will you call one of them? Tell them not to come if it isn’t convenient, though.”

Sophy, going upon this errand, met Victoria on the stairs.

“I am going to look for Sirius, Sophy,” said she, quite unconscious that some one was in the parlor. “It is strange that he isn’t about anywhere. Have you seen him?”

As she spoke, a man’s figure appeared in the doorway of the parlor.

“I want to tell you about the dog,” said Madison. “I didn’t have a chance—”

To his surprise the girl on the stairs turned and ran up again, leaving him with his sentence unfinished and without giving him a word of apology. It was most extraordinary behavior, Roger thought. Unquestionably, charming as the Starr sisters were, there was one among them who was peculiar. It was not the first time that Victoria had acted in the unaccountable fashion. Indeed, that very night, when he had carried Peter to his room, she had disappeared through one door as he came in the other. He should think that after having saved her brother’s life, she might treat him at least politely. However, she was only a little girl of fifteen, he said to himself, and probably knew no better how to behave. It was strange, though, for the others were undoubtedly well bred, and even little Sophy had good manners.

He was about to leave the house, too proud and too indignant to ask again to see any one, when Katherine came down.

“Sophy told me that you were here,” she said, “and I am so glad, for we want to thank you for all you have done. Vic is so upset with Peter’s accident that she couldn’t come down, but Honor will be here in a moment. Indeed, we cannot thank you enough!”

And then Honor came, and with tears in her eyes expressed her gratitude for what he had done for them. Madison described to them how and where he had found Peter, Sophy standing by his chair and drinking in every word.

“Then Sirius really saved Peter’s life,” said she.

“Yes, he was really the one; for if he hadn’t attracted my attention, I should never have known that he was there. Sirius was a brave, good dog.”

“Dear Sirius!” said Honor. “I didn’t like him when he first came here, but now I feel as if I couldn’t do enough for him.”

“I shall buy him a gold collar studded with diamonds the next time I go to Boston,” said Katherine.

“Kathie! Will you really?” asked Sophy. “And what will you buy for Mr. Madison?”

“He wouldn’t care for a gold collar,” laughed Katherine. “We shall have to do something else for him.”

“We cannot thank you enough,” said Honor again, very gravely. It scarcely seemed right to laugh when Peter had been so near death, and she felt that this debt of gratitude to Mr. Madison could never be repaid. There was a moment’s silence.

“Where do you suppose Sirius is?” said Sophy. “We haven’t seen him yet. I want to hug him for saving my only brother Peter.”

“My child, you will never see Sirius again,” said Roger. “He lost his own life when he saved Peter’s. He is dead.”

Sophy gazed at him for a moment in speechless astonishment. Then she buried her face in his arm.

“Sirius is dead!” she wailed. “Oh, what will Peter say?”

CHAPTER XIV.

SOPHY WAYLAYS ROGER MADISON.

SEVERAL days elapsed before they dared tell Peter of the fate of Sirius. The doctor’s orders that he should be kept very quiet must be obeyed, and that was the excuse which they gave him when the boy begged that Sirius might come to him.

The spring days, so beautiful in themselves, seemed to have brought much care and anxiety to the Starrs. Honor was visibly depressed, but Katherine had her music with Miss Madison to divert her, and Victoria’s feelings, whatever they may have been, she was careful to hide. The presence of Mrs. Wentworth Ward made a great change in the household, and Peter’s accident a still more serious one.

There were many extra steps to be taken, and sometimes he was a difficult patient. He did not mean to be exacting, but he felt it to be a greater trial than he deserved, to be kept in bed with a broken leg when the days out of doors were so beautiful, when trees and grass were daily growing greener, and the creatures had awakened from their winter’s nap, when “the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.”

Peter did not express his feelings in just these words perhaps, but the thought of all that was beautiful out of doors made him restless and his pain hard to bear.

Honor and Katherine divided the teaching hours, one remaining with Peter while the other superintended the school. The spring weather seemed to affect the pupils also, for at times they became quite unmanageable. Sometimes Honor wondered if her own impatience did not react upon herself, influencing the children and making them more or less refractory. Whatever the cause, the school had certainly never been so irksome. She was anxious, too, about Mr. Abbott. He was still very much of an invalid, and they had not seen him for several months.

In addition to all this, Peter’s illness would be a great expense to them, and Honor wondered how they should meet the doctor’s bills. She felt almost glad that her aunt was at Glen Arden; for, in spite of the many inconveniences which her presence brought, it also meant an increased income, and in the present state of their finances this was most important. To be sure, Blanch, indignant with the newcomer in the kitchen, had threatened more than once to leave, but that was one of the smaller vexations which, perhaps, could be avoided.

The thought that was now filling the hearts of Peter’s sisters with dread, was the fact that the time was rapidly approaching when they must tell him that Sirius was dead. Each one wondered how and when it was to be done and who should be the one to do it. They finally decided upon Victoria.

And so with an anxious heart, one afternoon Victoria went to her brother’s room. She knew that she should have no difficulty in introducing the subject, for Peter’s first question was always in regard to Sirius, and the sisters had found it almost impossible to answer him without arousing his suspicions. As she supposed would be the case, Victoria had scarcely crossed the threshold when she heard her brother’s somewhat querulous voice.

“Vic, where is Sirius? It does seem very hard that I can’t see my own dog. He wouldn’t excite me, and he wouldn’t jump on the bed if I told him not to. It excites me a great deal more not to see him, than it would if he were here.”

“I know, Peter dear!” said Victoria, going to the bed and sitting down upon the edge of it. “And there is nothing we would rather do, than bring Sirius to you. But we can’t. Will you try to bear it, Peter, when I tell you something very sad?”

“What is it, Vic?” exclaimed Peter, in a low voice. “I know what you are going to say! Is Sirius dead?”

Victoria nodded. Peter turned his face towards the wall.

“Please go away,” he said, still in the same low voice, and Victoria left him.

She returned in a short time to find him still in the same position. When she spoke to him he did not reply, and though she went again and again, it was always with the same result.

“What are we to do with him?” she said later to her sisters. “He won’t speak, and he just lies there with his face turned away. If he would only cry about it!”

“Peter won’t cry,” said Sophy. “He thinks it’s babyish. He was awful fond of Sirius, though. I’ve seen him kiss him often, on the top of his head, and he never likes to kiss anybody else. Oh dear, I wish I could do something to make him feel better!” The loving little sister’s eyes filled with tears, and she hid her face in Honor’s shoulder.

“The trouble is,” said Victoria, “he thinks we’re only girls and so he won’t talk to us. If father were here, or Mr. Abbott, it would be better. I really believe Peter would speak to them. If we only had somebody!”

It was unusual for Victoria’s courage to desert her, but it had all been very sad and depressing. Peter’s accident had unnerved her, and the subsequent dread of breaking the news to him, and then the disclosure itself, had been more of a strain than she realized.

“I wish we had an older brother!” she said, and then greatly to the surprise of the others she too began to cry. “What a goose I am!” she sobbed. “But I do feel so sorry for Peter and for all of us, and I wish he would speak to us.”

“I wonder if Mr. Madison would come and talk to him,” suggested Katherine.

“We can’t ask him to,” said Honor, quickly. “We must never ask him to do a thing. He would be the very one, I’ve no doubt, for Peter likes him, and he was the one who saved his life and was there when Sirius was killed, but it would never do to ask him. If he were to come of his own accord, it would be different.”

“It seems a great pity, then, that he can’t know how much he is needed,” said Katherine. “He seems to be the kind of man who always knows exactly what to say, and he is so good-natured he wouldn’t mind coming a bit. Do you really think, Honor, that it wouldn’t do to ask him?”

Honor shook her head very decidedly.

“It wouldn’t do at all,” said she.

Sophy, who had been listening attentively, dried her eyes. She was extremely disturbed by Victoria’s emotion, as were they all. It was so unusual to see her cry that Sophy felt that something very serious must be the matter. The little girl was ready to do anything to make her happier or to help Peter. The girls all said that to talk to a grown-up man would be the best thing for Peter, and that Mr. Madison would be the one of all others. Why not get Mr. Madison, then? To be sure, Honor had said that he must not be asked, but perhaps he would come without being asked if he knew that Peter needed him. Sophy felt very confident that Mr. Madison was a kind-hearted man, and if he were once told that he was needed, he would not wait to be asked.

She tried to say something of this to her sisters, but they were talking to each other and endeavoring to comfort Victoria, and she could not make them hear, so she determined to act for herself. She heard the whistle of one of the afternoon trains as it left the junction at Waterview. Perhaps Mr. Madison was on it!

Without further delay, she ran downstairs and out the front door. Like a young squirrel she scampered across the lawn and along the grassy path that led to the little station, arriving there just as the train did. One passenger only left it, and, greatly to her disappointment, it was not Mr. Madison.

There would not be another train for a long time, she knew, but nevertheless Sophy determined to wait for it. She was afraid that if she went back to the house, something or, more probably, somebody, would prevent her coming again, and she had made up her mind that the only way to secure Mr. Madison was to meet him at the train. She sat down on the edge of the platform,—there was no house here, only a little shed at which the trains stopped,—and waited.

The sun, which was warm to-day, shone down upon her, the soft May breezes played with the daisies that had sprung up about the railroad track, little birds gathered courage from her stillness, and hopped nearer to the small figure, looking at her with inquisitive glances, but Sophy heeded nothing. Many serious thoughts were passing through her childish mind in rapid succession. She wondered why Sirius had to die when they all loved him so, and it made it so hard for Peter. She wondered if there was anything in the world that she could do to make Peter happier.

And Victoria! She was so surprised to see real tears on Vic’s face. Was Vic a baby to cry, as Peter always said that Sophy was? She had never seen her do it before except when their father died. Then everybody had cried. Where was her father now, she wondered? Did he know they were all so sad and there was so little money? Where had he gone, and where had they come from? How strange everything was, and how puzzling! Sophy supposed that she should understand it all when she grew up.

In the meantime she wished that the train would come. She was tired of waiting, and perhaps Vic was still crying, and Peter still lying so strangely silent, with his face turned away from them, as they went one by one to express their sympathy. Would the train never come?

And at last it did come, and, to her intense relief, Mr. Madison was on it. He was the only passenger who left it, and he was greatly surprised when a small and hatless figure danced up to him and seized his hand.

“I’m so glad to see you!” cried a lisping voice. “I’ve been waiting ever and ever and ever so long!” Sophy’s face looked almost pretty in her excitement. “I’m not going to ask you to come,” she continued, “for Honor says you must never be asked to do anything; but we want a grown-up man so dreadfully to talk to Peter. Peter won’t say anything, and he knows Sirius is dead. He thinks we’re only girls, and if you were only our brother, you would talk to him. I wish you were our brother!”

“But even if I am not, I can talk to Peter,” said Roger Madison, quickly, “and that is what you would like, isn’t it?”

“Oh, yes!” exclaimed Sophy; “and I haven’t asked you, have I? Honor said, you know, that you must never be asked to do anything. I don’t exactly see why not. I wouldn’t mind asking you a bit, but I haven’t, have I?”

“Oh, no indeed! I’m coming entirely of my own free will. I want to talk to Peter.”

“How lovely!” said Sophy, as, with her hand tightly clasped in his, she skipped along at his side. “You are such a nice man. You would make a lovely brother. You see, everything was dreadful this afternoon, and Vic really cried!”

Sophy said this with the air of imparting a most unheard-of piece of news. That Vic should cry was to her almost as important as Peter’s broken leg.

“Come right upstairs,” said she, when they reached the house. “Come right up to Peter’s room.”

“I think you had better say that I am here,” said Madison, hesitating.

“Oh, why?” exclaimed Sophy, impatiently; but seeing that he was firm in regard to this, she ran upstairs and peeped into Peter’s room. He was still lying with his face turned away, and she did not look far enough to see that Victoria was sitting behind the door. She ran down again as quickly as she had gone up and once more grasped Mr. Madison by the hand.

“It is all right,” she said. “Come right up.”

They mounted the stairs, and still hand in hand they entered Peter’s room.

“Peter,” said the small sister, “here’s a grown-up man come to see you. Here is Mr. Madison.”

Peter turned his head, and Sophy gave a sigh of relief. He had actually moved and was looking at them. At the same moment an exclamation of surprise came from some one else. Victoria rose to her feet and stood for a moment in silence. She gave one glance at Mr. Madison, and then her eyes fell, while the color came and went in her cheeks. She looked precisely as she had looked in the picture shop and stood in almost the same attitude. Madison recognized her at once, and he held out his hand.

“I’m glad to meet you again,” he said simply.

“Please don’t tell any one,” said Victoria. “No one knows it, and I’ve tried not to meet you. Honor wouldn’t like it.”

“Very well,” said he, gravely, and Victoria could see that he was surprised at her remark. “Just as you say, of course.”

Then she left the room, wondering if she had said the wrong thing. Was it what Honor would call “unconventional”? She wished that she had never tried to hide the fact that she had met Roger Madison before. It was such a little thing in itself, and yet it was constantly leading her to do rude and peculiar things. This was certainly a most trying afternoon, and again Victoria shut herself into her room and cried, and though Sophy came more than once and rattled the handle of the door, she would not let her in.

Sophy, when Mr. Madison was safely shut into Peter’s room, lost no time in making known the fact to her sisters.

“Why, Sophy!” exclaimed Honor. “How did he happen to come?”

“I met him at the station,” said she, “and I told him we wished we had a grown-up man, and so he said he would come. I didn’t ask him to, Honor. Really and truly I didn’t ask him to come. I only said we needed him.”

“But, Sophy dear, that amounted to the same thing, and don’t you remember that I said we mustn’t ask him. I wouldn’t have had you do it for the world.”

“I don’t see why, Honor. You asked Miss Madison to come the other day. Why can’t we ask Mr. Madison?”

“The cases are very different,” said Honor, somewhat severely, “and you ought not to have done what I told you not to.”

“Oh dear me,” cried Sophy, tears again trembling on her lashes, “I only wanted to make Peter better, and I didn’t really ask him to come! I only said I wished he was our brother, for then he’d be here.”

“You didn’t say that, surely, Sophy!” exclaimed Katherine.

“Why, yes!” said Sophy, surprise at Katherine’s vehemence drying her tears. “Why shouldn’t I?”

“Never mind,” interposed Honor. “It is too late now, but another time, Sophy, please be more careful to do exactly as I say. Isn’t it time for you to go to your music lesson, Katherine? I am going to Aunt Sophia’s room to see if she wants anything. Come, Sophy.”

But Sophy declined to accompany her. She sat on the top step of the stairs, waiting for Vic to emerge from her locked room or for Mr. Madison to leave Peter. She thought her sisters were all very peculiar to-day. She had heard Victoria’s remark to Mr. Madison and she wondered what she could have meant. She stored it away in the recesses of her memory, intending to ask about it when a convenient opportunity should present itself.

When Roger Madison was left alone with Peter, he quietly closed the door, and drawing up the chair which Victoria had vacated he sat down near the bed.

“I am sure you want to hear all about your brave, good dog,” said he; “and so I have come to tell you. He saved his master’s life if ever a dog did. If it hadn’t been for him, you wouldn’t be lying here now. Would you like me to tell you about it?”

“Yes,” said Peter.

And then Mr. Madison described to him the scene on the bridge.

“It was a glorious end for Sirius,” said he, when he had finished. “I know you feel badly enough about losing your dog. So should I. Indeed, I went through very much the same experience myself once, when I was a little younger than you—no, perhaps about your age. You are fourteen, aren’t you? I lost a dog that I was very fond of, and if it hadn’t been for my sister I should have been very selfish about it. She showed me how I ought to take it.”

“Oh, it’s easy for girls to talk,” said Peter. “They’ve all been in here this afternoon, telling me I ought to bear it, and make the best of it, and all that. As if I could ever get over losing Sirius, the best dog that ever lived! It is ridiculous for those girls to talk the way they do.”

“My dear fellow,” said Roger Madison, “do you know that you are a very lucky fellow to have those sisters? I’ve often wondered whether you appreciated them. I have one sister, and I wouldn’t give her up for all the money in the world. You have four, so you ought to be four times as grateful.”

“For four sisters?” said Peter, incredulously. “They’re nice enough, of course, but they order a fellow round too much, and they don’t understand. They seem to think I oughtn’t to mind about Sirius a bit.”

“I don’t think they feel that way. They have been very much worried about you, and they have felt pretty badly, I can tell you, about Sirius’s death and the way you would feel it. I happen to know that, and I also know that your sister Victoria has been crying about it this afternoon.”

“Vic crying?” Peter seemed to be as much impressed by this fact as Sophy had been.

“They are about the pluckiest girls that I ever knew,” continued Madison. “If they were my sisters, I should be mighty proud of them, I can tell you. I’ve no doubt that you are too, and are doing all you can to help.”

“There is nothing I can do,” said Peter, gloomily. “Just lying here and looking out at the trees and wishing I was out there. And I’ve been wanting Sirius so much and wishing he could come to me, and now I’ll never see him again.” He turned his face away as he had done before.

“Peter,” said his friend, “I like you and I think there’s good stuff in you. Here’s a chance for you to show it. You can be a hero just as much as Sirius was, though in a very different way. You have a good deal to bear. A broken leg is no small matter, and the loss of your dog is a great sorrow to you, but if you try to be brave about it all, and try to make things easier for your sisters while you are laid up instead of worrying them in any way, I think you will be doing a good deal. I know it’s hard. We men are not very patient, and we don’t bear pain and discomfort as well as women do. Do you know that?”

“No,” said Peter, scornfully; “that can’t be!”

“Indeed it is so. If one of your sisters had broken her leg and were lying here, she would probably be three times as patient as either you or I should be.”

“Honor or Vic, perhaps,” remarked Peter, “but not Katherine.”

“Well, I’m not able to judge of that, of course, but I wish you would show that our sex occasionally does know how to behave under trying circumstances. I wish you’d do your best to be a hero. I was ill once, and when I got well, they told me I had nearly driven them all crazy,—I was so impatient and exacting,—so you see I don’t exactly practise what I preach. But that was a good while ago.”

“I wish you’d come to see me again,” said Peter, when his new friend rose to take leave. “You may say that girls are so fine, and all that, but I’d like to talk to you once in a while. I want to ask you something. I think I’ll ask you now. Don’t you think it’s pretty mean that I’m so much younger than the others, and that the girls have to work, when if I’d been the eldest I could have taken care of them?”

“My dear boy,” said Roger Madison, “depend upon it, you are placed in the family just where you are most needed. God knows better than we do about such things, as He does about everything else, and He intended you to be of use just where you are. And I think He means you to begin at once to be of use; and you can be so by being as brave as Sirius was. There are several kinds of courage and they are equally good. The courage to be patient and cheerful and kind when you don’t feel like it counts for as much in the eyes of God as the courage which saves a life. I don’t often talk like this, but I’m interested in you, Peter, and I want you to be the man I think you have it in you to be. Good-bye. I’ll come in again to-morrow, if you like.”

CHAPTER XV.

VICTORIA MEETS WITH DIFFICULTIES.

“IT seems to me that you are not as proficient as one would expect. There are a number of mistakes in this letter. How long have you been using the typewriter, Victoria?”

“Not very long, Aunt Sophia.”

“But how long?”

“A few—at least, some weeks.”

“Weeks? I supposed that you had owned one for months. In fact, it has never been explained to me where you got it nor how you happened to get it. Who bought the typewriter?”

“Er—we did.”

“But which one of you? I am under the impression that it belongs to Katherine. Am I right? Did she buy it?”

There was no reply. The aunt and niece were in Mrs. Wentworth Ward’s room this afternoon in June, engaged with the correspondence of the latter. It was a beautiful day, and Victoria longed to be out of doors. She had watched Katherine go across the lawn with her music-roll under her arm, and she knew that she was going to the house on the hill to read music with Miss Madison. Honor was sitting under the trees with Sophy and Peter, who was able now to be out of doors, lying stretched out in a steamer chair. Victoria alone was in the house this golden afternoon; and, anxious though she was to finish her task and be off,—no doubt for that very reason,—she had never worked so slowly. Her mistakes were innumerable, and several times she had been obliged to rewrite a note because of her aunt’s dissatisfaction with its appearance.

“Which one of you bought the typewriter?” repeated Mrs. Ward.

“Why do you want to know, Aunt Sophia?”

“I have my reasons. Who bought it?”

“Katherine did.”

“Ah, I thought so! I was sure that Honor told me so. And why does not Katherine use it?”

“She has so much else to do.”

“And yet she seems to have time to go to the Madisons’ almost, if not quite every day. Katherine is selfish.”

“Oh, Aunt Sophia, I don’t think so!”

“You may not think so, but that does not alter the facts. She is both selfish and extravagant—two serious faults. It is well for all of you that she is in a fair way to make a good match, but I am sorry for the young man.”

“Why, Aunt Sophia, what do you mean?” asked Victoria, gazing at her aunt in surprise.

“My dear, you must see for yourself what I mean. I shall say no more, but it is a self-evident fact. I will talk to Honor about it. There is nothing to be said against his family, and he seems to be a very nice young man,—good manners, good-looking, and all that, but Katherine is very young.”

“Young! I should think so,” said Victoria, indignantly. “Katherine hasn’t an idea of anything of the kind, and I don’t see why it should ever have occurred to you, Aunt Sophia. Can’t people, men and women, I mean, be good friends without that being thought of?”

“Very seldom, my dear. But why you should be so disturbed by my remarks I cannot imagine. Your cheeks are flushed, and your eyes are like saucers. One would think that I had suggested something quite unusual and very much to be dreaded, instead of an event which would be most desirable in every way.”

“I don’t think it would be desirable at all!” exclaimed Victoria. “Excuse me, Aunt Sophia, for contradicting you, but I can’t help it. It would be perfectly hateful to have either Honor or Katherine married, and to Mr. Madison of all people. Oh, it couldn’t possibly be!”

“But why not, Victoria? Why have you such an aversion for Mr. Madison?”

“Oh, because,” said Victoria, breaking down somewhat lamely. “I don’t want them to marry any one. I wish you hadn’t told me. Not that I think there is anything in it at all, but—but it just makes me think about it.”

“I most sincerely wish I had not,” rejoined Mrs. Wentworth Ward. “It has quite prevented your being of any further assistance to me this afternoon, and we may as well lay aside these other papers. You are usually so sensible that I supposed you would be so in this case. It is quite absurd for you to become so excited. There is another question that I wish to speak about to one of you, but I will wait until I see Honor. She is the proper one.”

“Won’t I do, Aunt Sophia?”

Victoria was sorry that she had allowed her excitement to run away with her. If it had been any one but Roger Madison whom her aunt had suggested as a possible husband for Katherine, she could have borne it better, but try as she would, and much as she really liked the young man, she could not overcome the feeling that she had about him in regard to the sale of the etchings.

That affair had assumed astounding proportions in her mind. From constant brooding over it without imparting the facts of the case to any one else, she had greatly exaggerated their importance. It seemed to her out of the question that Katherine should be allowed to become engaged while in ignorance of it, and in that event, Honor too should be told, and yet after her long silence she dreaded speaking of it. She wished that she could ask the advice of some one else, some older person, but there was no one. If it were upon any other subject, she would go at once to Miss Madison, she thought, who was so kind and friendly, but under the circumstances of course that was out of the question.

Even though Victoria and Roger Madison had met that afternoon in Peter’s room, she had tried since to avoid him. This was not easy, for he came to the house very frequently, ostensibly to see Peter. Was it really to see Katherine? She wondered what other alarming news her Aunt Sophia might have to disclose. Something disagreeable, she had no doubt, and she would try to save Honor from hearing it.

“I hope you will tell me,” she said, as she watched her aunt fold up the unanswered letters, replace them in their envelopes, and lay them away in the proper pigeon-hole in her desk. “I will try not to be so excited over this, but the other was such a surprise.”

“I have no doubt this will be also,” said Mrs. Wentworth Ward, “and probably you will take up the cudgels in defence of the young man just as violently as you have scouted the idea of Katherine’s plans.”

“Her plans? And what young man? Are you again speaking of Mr. Madison?”

“Not by any means. I am speaking of the young man who attends to so much of your gardening, and who, as far as I can make out, has more confidence reposed in him, than any one else who comes to Glen Arden. I mean David.”

“David? Dave Carney? Why, Aunt Sophia, what is the trouble about him? We have always found him so satisfactory.”

“Exactly so, and therefore you have never taken the trouble to find out anything else about him. Where did you get him in the first place?”

“Peter met him in Fordham, and brought him home.”

“And do you mean to tell me that is all you know about him? Did you look up his references?”

“No-o, I don’t think so—at least, I’m not sure. Honor attends to all such things. But why, Aunt Sophia? What makes you ask?”

“I have reason to suspect him,” said Mrs. Wentworth Ward. “When I was in Boston yesterday I saw him, or some one who closely resembled him, going into a pawnbroker’s shop, and since then I have questioned Ellen Higgins.”

Ellen Higgins was Mrs. Ward’s maid whom she had brought with her to Glen Arden.

“And what does she say?” asked Victoria. She did not fancy Ellen herself, and since her advent there had been endless trouble in the kitchen.

“She does not like him, and she thinks you trust him entirely too much.”

Victoria felt like replying, “I wish Ellen Higgins would mind her own business,” but she restrained herself. Instead she remarked:

“We all like Dave Carney, and we have found him very satisfactory, but I think, after all, that Honor is the one for you to speak to about him. And now if you will excuse me, I will go—that is, if you have quite finished with the work.”

“I have finished because you were doing it so badly,” said her aunt. “I am ashamed to send such miserable typewriting as you did this afternoon.”

“Why not let me write the letters over with a pen, Aunt Sophia? I write a very clear hand, you know.”

“I prefer the typewriter for many reasons, and as you own one, you should be able to make use of it, even if Katherine was the one to buy it. I am astonished at you all. You are very headstrong. Now you may go.”

And Victoria quickly took her departure.

Her mind was filled with the new ideas presented to her, but she found time to wonder why her aunt was not willing to have her notes and various documents written in a good clear hand with a pen, instead of insisting upon having them typewritten. But such a question was of minor importance, she thought, as she ran downstairs and across the lawn. Even if she could not tell Honor what was troubling her about Katherine, it would be a comfort to be near her.

She had two secrets now to keep from her sisters, and strangely enough, they were both connected with Roger Madison. Victoria felt that life had become very complicated within the last few months.

She found her eldest sister sitting on a rustic bench under the trees, with her work in her hands. She was making a dress for Sophy, who was playing with her doll, but who was so deeply interested in Peter’s occupation that the doll was frequently neglected.

Peter was lying back in his chair while he held an opera-glass to his eyes and gazed up into the branches of the tree above him. No one had spoken for some time, and when Victoria drew near, her brother held up his hand with a gesture of warning.

“Hush!” he whispered.

Victoria sank quietly upon the grass and waited. It gave her time to think over her aunt’s disturbing speeches, and for this she was not sorry.

The silence lasted for some minutes, and then Peter put down his glass.

“It’s a robin’s nest,” said he. “I thought it was, from the shape. I bet if we could see into it, we’d find it was lined with mud. Robins’ nests always are. The young ones are getting quite big, and one is terribly greedy when the old ones come. I daresay it is a cowbird.”

“But you said they were robins, Peter,” said Sophy.

“I know I did, but that doesn’t prevent a cowbird being there too, does it? That is just what those hateful cowbirds do. They are too lazy to build nests of their own, but they go and lay their eggs in other birds’ nests whenever they get a chance, and never go near them again. Then the cowbird’s egg gets hatched with the robin’s or the catbird’s eggs, or whatever nest it happens to have been laid in, and the little cowbird is awfully greedy and snatches all the food, and grows up to be just like its parents. Oh, they are hateful birds! I was reading about them to-day in a book Mr. Madison lent me on birds. It said there that no self-respecting American bird will have anything to do with cowbirds. English sparrows are the only birds that will go with them. I thought that was pretty good, for every one knows that an English sparrow hasn’t much self-respect. I’m sure that is a cowbird up there, poking its head so far out and snatching, every time the old robins come with the worms.”

“Oh, Peter, I wish you would let me look!” said Sophy, in pleading tones.

Peter hesitated. He was very much interested in the proceedings in the tree; the opera-glass was adjusted to exactly the right point for his eyes, and in all probability Sophy would move it—she always did. Then, again, Sophy would never be able to locate the nest, and much valuable time would be wasted for nothing.

He was about to refuse her request when a new idea occurred to him. After all, it was not much to do for Sophy, who had been so devoted to him ever since his accident. She had run up and down stairs for him forty times a day. In fact, she had gone to the house a short time ago when he had expressed a wish for the opera-glass, and had brought it to him, and again for a book on birds. She never refused to do what he asked; on the contrary, she was eager to please him.

Peter handed her the glass.

“Look right up the trunk of the tree, Soph,” he said kindly, “till you get to the second branch from the top to the right, and a little way along that, leaning up against a small branch that isn’t much more than a twig, is the robin’s nest. Do you see? With all those heads sticking out. They’re getting hungry, I guess, for the old birds haven’t been back for ten minutes at least. They hear us talking, I suppose, and are afraid to come. Keep very quiet, now, if you’ve found the nest, and watch.”

Sophy, greatly pleased, peered up into the tree and waited. She had scarcely dared hope that Peter would allow her to look, and her heart was filled with an overpowering love for the brother who was so good to her.

It was a little thing for him to do, perhaps, but Peter felt happier than if he had declined to point out the nest to Sophy, and even though it did take her a long time to find it, and though she turned the screw to and fro in her efforts to see better, and retained possession of the glass for at least ten minutes, he was glad on the whole that he had lent it to her.

Victoria sat upon the grass, absent-mindedly poking a hole in the ground with a bit of stick that she had found, and thinking about the very disturbing topic that had been suggested to her by her aunt. She did not pay much attention to the remarks about Dave Carney, for she considered her aunt a very prejudiced person who had objected to the boy’s presence at Glen Arden from the first.

The news about Katherine was far more alarming, and while she thought about it the sound of voices was heard in the distance, and the very persons of whom she was thinking were seen coming down the avenue towards the group under the trees.

“Dear me,” exclaimed Peter, impatiently, “here they all come! Now I shall have no chance at the birds at all. Mr. Madison is an awfully good fellow, but I wish he had stayed away this afternoon.”

Victoria’s glance chanced to rest upon Honor at this moment, and she was surprised to see a peculiar expression cross her face and the color deepen in her cheeks. She wondered if Aunt Sophia’s absurd ideas about Katherine and Roger Madison could possibly have occurred to her as well. In that case, perhaps they were not so absurd. She really thought she must talk to Honor about it that very night. There could be no harm in doing so, and she felt that she was incapable of bearing the burden of two secrets.

In the meantime there was no necessity for staying where she was if Roger Madison were coming, so Victoria rose at their approach, and waving her hand to them walked back to the house.

“Why does your sister, Victoria, always run away from us?” said Miss Madison, as she seated herself beside Honor. “I like her so much, and I wish I could see more of her.”

“She doesn’t run away from you,” said Sophy before Honor could reply. Miss Madison as well as her brother was a great favorite with the child, and she would have liked to gaze for hours at the beautiful face had her sisters not admonished her so frequently for staring.

“It’s your brother,” she added.

“But why my brother?” said Miss Madison in surprise.

“I don’t know,” said the truthful Sophy, “but ever since you came I’ve noticed that Vic ran away from your brother, and the other day when she was in Peter’s room and didn’t know he was coming and I brought him in, Vic said: ‘Don’t tell any one. I’ve tried not to meet you. Nobody knows it.’ I asked her afterwards what she meant, and she wouldn’t tell me.”

“Why, Sophy, what are you talking about?” asked Honor.

“Mr. Madison knows, don’t you?” said the child, turning to him. “Will you tell me what Vic meant?”

“Certainly not, if Miss Victoria won’t tell you herself,” said he; “I think you must ask her. Did you see the bird’s nest?”

“Yes, I did,” said Sophy, nodding her head wisely, “but you are only trying to get out of telling me by changing the subject. We weren’t talking about birds.”

“But we will talk about them now, Sophy,” said Honor, quietly, while she wondered what the child could mean. “We have been studying birds all the afternoon, Mr. Madison, and there are several questions that I know Peter wants to ask you.”

But Honor determined to speak to Victoria that very night, for she too had noticed her peculiar conduct, so unlike Vic’s usual open and cordial manner. There must be some reason for it, and Honor would have questioned her about it before this had there not been so many other things to occupy their minds.

It was a beautiful evening, and after supper the family sat on the piazza while the twilight deepened after the long June day, and in time the light of the moon made itself felt, and shone down upon the lawn where the trees cast such strange shadows.

Peter lay in the hammock until his bedtime, and after he and Sophy had gone upstairs and Mrs. Ward into the house to establish herself with her book by the parlor lamp, with the remark that she had no time to waste in moon gazing, the three sisters were left alone.

Victoria, who was anxious to speak with Honor, wished that there was something which would take Katherine into the house or elsewhere, that she might have the desired opportunity, for her words were meant for Honor’s ears alone.

Honor, while equally desirous of speaking to Victoria, was perfectly willing to do so in Katherine’s presence. The three had always been in the habit of talking freely together, and so Honor opened the subject at once.

“Why do you always try to avoid the Madisons, Vic?” said she, suddenly.

Victoria started guiltily. How strange, she thought, that Honor should have pounced upon the very topic that was occupying her mind.

“Do I?” said she. It was a difficult matter for Victoria to attempt evasion.

“Yes. You know you do. There must be some reason for it. We have all noticed it, and Miss Madison spoke of it this afternoon.”

“I don’t try to avoid her,” said Victoria.

“No, we know that,” said Katherine, “but you do avoid Roger, and it is very strange.”

“Roger! Do you call him Roger?” asked Victoria, somewhat icily.

“Oh, no, of course not to his face,” rejoined Katherine, impatiently, “but I hear his sister speak of him so often that I did it then without thinking.”

“I don’t think you ought to,” said Honor. “You might do it without thinking before him.”

“You must think I am very stupid,” laughed Katherine, “and I am not quite so ignorant of the ways of the world as all that! Honor, you are too funny about Roger Mad—I mean, Mr. Madison, begging all your pardons! He is so nice and jolly, and sings so well, but you never will go there much, and Vic is still queerer. Come now, Vicky, and tell us why you run away from him.”

“I can’t tell you anything,” replied Victoria, in a somewhat stifled voice. “I wish you wouldn’t ask me such unnecessary questions.”

“They are not unnecessary, dear,” said Honor, gently. “If you have any reason for doing it, you really ought to tell us. When it reaches such a pass that even little Sophy speaks of it, and repeated before us all this afternoon what you said to Mr. Madison the day you met him in Peter’s room, I really think you ought to explain.”

“Did Sophy do that?” exclaimed Victoria. “What did she say?”

“That you begged Mr. Madison not to tell any one, and that you had tried not to meet him, and that no one knew it. It is certainly very mysterious, Vic, and I think you ought to tell us.”

Victoria, sitting on the steps with her white dress gleaming in the moonlight, was silent. She would like to tell them the whole story. Should she do so? But then, if Katherine—she stopped short, even in her thoughts. She wished that her Aunt Sophia had never presented so disagreeable an idea to her imagination.

Should she tell them, or should she not? It would be a distinct relief to talk it over with them, and to feel free at last from the burden of a secret. She was about to speak when Katherine motioned to her to be silent.

“Wait a minute,” Katherine said in a whisper. She had been watching intently the clump of trees and shrubbery, near the side of the house, which separated them from the flower garden. “I’m sure I heard something or somebody moving, and I thought I saw the shadow of a man. Who can it be?”

“Let’s go find out,” said Victoria, promptly, glad to have the matter decided for her and the subject changed. “It was probably a night-hawk or an owl. It couldn’t be a man, Katherine!”

The three went around the corner of the house and walked about among the shrubbery. No thought of fear entered their minds.

“It is nothing, after all,” said Katherine at last. “I must have been mistaken, but it was exactly like the shadow of a man.”

“Well, I am going to bed as long as your shadow isn’t going to materialize,” said Victoria; “so good night, girls!” And abruptly leaving them, she went into the house.

“It is funny about Vic, isn’t it, Honor?” said Katherine. “I mean that she won’t explain why she doesn’t like Mr. Madison.”

“Very, and I am going to speak to her again about it. Perhaps she would tell me more if we were alone.”

“You mean without me? Why, I should like to know? However, if you do find out, you mustn’t fail to tell me, for I really am most curious about it.”

CHAPTER XVI.

MIDNIGHT MARAUDERS.

VICTORIA went upstairs to her room, but it was long before she went to bed. Sophy was fast asleep in her little bed in the corner, and Victoria knew that there was no danger of her waking. The shades at the two windows had been drawn as high as they would go, and the moonlight streamed in, lying in white patches upon the floor and making the room as light as day.

Victoria sat down in the shadow near one of the windows and looked out into the night. Her room was next to that of her aunt, and over the dining-room. Beneath her window was the shrubbery in which Katherine had heard the suspicious sounds a short time since. Beyond lay the flower garden, the beds bathed in the moonlight, and the roses lifting their heads to catch the dew. On the other side of the flower garden was the vegetable patch, and beyond that again the pasture and the woods.

The window near which she sat was directly above the bay-window of the dining-room, the roof of which projected from the side of the house. Vines grew up over the dining-room window and had been trained on either side of Victoria’s, so that in summer time she looked through a veritable bower of green, and this year a pair of bluebirds had built their nest there and sometimes wakened her in the early dawn with their sweet singing.

Victoria sat for a long time quite motionless. She heard her aunt come up to her room and, after a half-hour of activity, subside into the tranquillity of night. She felt it to be a merciful arrangement of human affairs and habits that people were forced to rest for a few hours out of the twenty-four, otherwise the stirring nature of Mrs. Wentworth Ward would know no calm.

She heard Katherine mount to her rooms in the third story, and Honor go to hers on the other side of the house.

At last all was still. Victoria’s brain, wide awake and unusually alert for this hour of the night, was still occupied with the tiresome topics of the afternoon. She felt that she could not sleep until she had imparted some of the new ideas with which it was teeming to some one, and that some one must be Honor. Her sister could not yet be asleep, Victoria thought; so leaving her window wide open, she went across the hall and around the gallery to Honor’s room and knocked softly on the door. Her sister opened it at once.

“What is the matter, Vic?” she asked. “Are you ill? Why, you are still in your dress, and you came up two hours ago!”

“I know it. Hush, Honor, don’t speak so loud! I don’t want any one to hear me. Do you mind if I come in and talk? Are you very sleepy?”

“No, not a bit sleepy. Come in, of course. I want especially to see you. What is the matter, Vic? You have looked so anxious all the afternoon, and not a bit like yourself. What is it?”

“It is all Aunt Sophia,” said Victoria, curling herself up on the foot of the bed.

“Aunt Sophia! Why, what has she been saying? I thought you were too busy, when you were with her, to talk.”

“Is Aunt Sophia ever too busy to say what she wants to?”

“But what was it about?”

“Dave Carney, for one thing.”

Honor laughed. “Surely, my dear child, you are not staying up half the night just because Aunt Sophia sees fit to criticise Dave Carney? If I minded her as much as that, I should never sleep a wink after she had been talking about poor B. Lafferty, who, by the way, declares that she is going to-morrow ‘for certain sure!’ What does she say about Dave?”

“Oh, she doesn’t think he is honest, because she was sure she saw him going into a pawnbroker’s shop. As if that proved anything! She might just as well say that I wasn’t, because I sold the gold and the—” Victoria paused.

“Not quite the same thing,” said Honor, “for you really had the things to sell; but I can’t imagine where Dave Carney gets anything to pawn. But I can’t think why you are so worried, Vic. Aunt Sophia has been saying that sort of thing all our lives.”

“Oh, I know that. It isn’t that I am worried about, of course, Honor. She was speaking about something else, that I hadn’t thought of before. Something about Katherine.”

“What about her?” asked Honor, quickly.

“Well, she said first that she was selfish and extravagant, and then—I really hate to repeat it, Honor, for it doesn’t seem a bit nice, but I must tell you—then she said it didn’t make so much difference as she was going to marry a rich man, or ‘make a good match,’ as she expressed it. Don’t you think it was rather disagreeable for Aunt Sophia to say that? And whom do you suppose she meant, Honor?”

“Mr. Madison, of course.”

Honor’s voice was so peculiar that Victoria glanced at her sharply, but it was too dark in the room for her to see her face very clearly.

“Yes, Mr. Madison; but I don’t see how you happened to guess it so quickly.”

“Chiefly because there is no one else whom Aunt Sophia could possibly mean. There isn’t another man in the neighborhood.”

“But, Honor, have you noticed anything? Do you think that Katherine—well, that she cares for him? Of course he likes her, he couldn’t help liking her, but—oh, I don’t know! It doesn’t seem a bit nice to talk about Katherine this way, and I wish Aunt Sophia hadn’t said anything. I told her that probably they were just good friends, and she said that was almost impossible. Don’t you think that is a most ridiculous idea, Honor?”

“Very ridiculous, and I agree with you that it isn’t very nice to talk about it. I know lots of girls do, and we should be considered very old-fashioned and peculiar not to want to. We are different from most girls, and I think we feel differently about those things. So don’t let us say any more, Vic, unless Katherine wants to speak about it herself.”

“And there is nothing for us to do?”

“No,” said Honor, very quietly, “there is nothing for us to do.” And then, very much to the surprise of Victoria, she hid her face in the pillow.

“Why, are you so sleepy, Honor?” asked the younger sister. “You don’t look so. What is the matter?”

“No, I’m not really sleepy, but—but I think we have talked long enough, Vicky dear! If you don’t mind, I would rather not say any more.”

“But I haven’t been here more than fifteen minutes, Honor, and there is something else that I thought of telling you.”

“Not to-night, please, dear. I would rather not talk any more to-night, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

“Well, just as you say, of course!” said Victoria, as she got up. “I think you are very queer, though. You said you were glad to see me and that you wanted to talk about something yourself, and now, almost right away, you tell me to go! What did you want to say to me?”

“Don’t be huffy, dear! I know I did want to, but really, I can’t talk about anything more to-night. I—I have a headache.”

“Oh, you poor thing!” cried Victoria, her resentment fading at once. “Why didn’t you tell me so before? I thought you looked different from usual. Can’t I do anything for you? It was a shame for me to come and bother you, but you seemed glad to have me when I came. Shall I bathe your head with cologne?”

“No, I thank you. If I once get asleep, I shall be all right, and it is really pretty late, Vic. It is nearly twelve o’clock. You had better go to bed right away. Good night, dear.”

Honor was almost pushing her sister out of the room as she spoke, and Victoria heard her close and lock the door behind her.

“If Honor isn’t too funny!” she said to herself. “Locking me out, actually! Well, if she isn’t going to worry, there is no need of my doing so. People never do what you expect them to. Honor is certainly queer.

‘Jog on, jog on the footpath way’—

Why, how very peculiar! I am sure I didn’t leave my door open.”

She had reached her own room and paused before the open door. She had certainly not left it open, because of the draught which Sophy would have been in between it and the window. Perhaps the breeze had blown it open, and yet that did not seem possible, for the night was a still one, and it seemed to be growing warmer. She went into the room and found Sophy sitting up in bed.

“Oh, is that you, Vic?” she exclaimed. “I’m so glad! Have you just come up? And did you meet Dave?”

“My dear child, you must be dreaming! Of course I didn’t meet Dave. It is the middle of the night.”

“But Dave just went through here,” said Sophy. “I heard a sound that woke me up, and when I opened my eyes there was Dave just going out the door. Didn’t you see him?”

“Dearest, I know you have been dreaming,” said Victoria, sitting down beside her little sister and taking her hand. “I tell you, it is after twelve o’clock, and Dave is probably sound asleep in his room at the barn. You know he is never upstairs here, and of course he wouldn’t be going through our room at any hour. You have such vivid dreams sometimes, Sophy. Don’t you remember the one about the pony that you thought was here in the room?”

Sophy laughed. “That was a funny one,” she said, “and the other about the animals that could talk, after Peter had been reading those stories to me. Well, perhaps you’re right, Vic, and this was a dream about Dave, but it was a very clear one, and I was frightened when I woke up and you weren’t here. Are you going to bed now?”

“Yes, very quickly, and you must try to go to sleep right away, it is so late.”

Sophy obediently lay down and was soon fast asleep again.

“Funny how the child dreams,” thought Victoria, “and it was funny, too, that I should have left the door open. Something must have blown down in the breeze and waked her up, and that was the noise she heard. Yes, here is a photograph on the floor, and this little book that was near the edge of my table. It must have been a pretty strong wind to blow that off, and yet it seems so warm now.”

And before long Victoria was herself asleep, having dismissed her cares and anxieties with the determination to think no more about them. If Honor was not troubled by them, why should she be?

It seemed to Victoria that she had been asleep but a few moments when she was awakened by a sharp and excited rapping upon her door. It must be morning, however, for instead of the moon which had lighted her room when she went to sleep, the sun was now shining in the heavens, already quite high and well advanced upon his day’s journey.

“Vic,” said Honor’s voice in the hall, “open your door quickly! The most dreadful thing has happened.”

Victoria sprang to let her in.

“What is it?” she asked.

“The house has been robbed,” said Honor. “Burglars have been here, and everything downstairs has been ransacked! Oh, Vic, isn’t it too dreadful?”

Victoria was speechless with surprise and consternation.

“I thought I heard a noise in the night,” continued Honor; “I didn’t sleep very well, and I thought of going down to the dining-room to get a glass of water. Oh, Vic, suppose I had! I should have met them! Instead, I took some water from the pitcher in my room, and I remember setting the pitcher down on the floor with quite a hard thump. It was after that, I think, that I heard a sound like a door shutting. It grew very warm in the night, and I opened my window with quite a noise. I shouldn’t wonder if it had frightened them off.”

“Have they taken much?” asked Victoria.

“I don’t know yet, for everything is in confusion. Blanch came up to tell me. The silver was most of it in my room, fortunately. It is a good thing we are in the habit of bringing it up every night. How do you suppose they got in?”

“I can imagine. Do you remember, Honor, that Katherine thought she heard some one in the shrubbery? I do wonder if the burglar was hiding there! How perfectly horrible it seems!”

“And we walked about there looking for him! I must go up and tell Katherine, and when you are dressed, we will go down and make a careful search.”

In the meantime, Sophy had waked up, and, hearing the news, could scarcely control her excitement. She flew about the room, constantly getting into Victoria’s way, begging to be helped with her innumerable buttons, and asking a thousand questions.

“What is a buggler, Vic?” she demanded. “I always thought a buggler was some kind of a bug, like a buffalo bug, or something of that sort. Is it really a real live man? And what did he want in our house? And how did he get in, Vic, with the doors all locked and bolted? I say, Vic, how did he get in?”

“I don’t know,” said Vic. “Sophy, do please get out of my way! I’m in such a hurry. Go stand by the window, there’s a good girl!”

“But won’t you tell me what a buggler is?” pleaded Sophy. “I won’t stir if you’ll only tell me.”

“It’s a robber. Do you know what that is?”

“Of course I do. That is a sensible name. Any one would know that a robber robs, but a buggler!”

“A buggler doesn’t bug,” said Victoria, laughing in spite of her hurry and dismay. “Let me tell you that it is burglar, and not buggler.”

Sophy had by this time taken up her station by the window.

“Why, Vic,” she cried, looking out, “did you know that all the vines are torn round this window? They’re just streaming! What do you s’pose has made ’em so?”

Victoria ran to look.

“They weren’t so last night,” said she. “Sophy, it looks exactly as if some one had climbed up here. Do you think the man could possibly have come in this way?”

She stood by the window, reviewing hastily in her mind the events of the night. She had sat there for a long time and then had left the room. She had been absent not more than fifteen or twenty minutes, and when she came back the door was open. It gave her a most uncomfortable sensation to feel that the robber had actually been in her very room.

“I shouldn’t wonder a bit,” said Sophy. “You know I dreamed Dave Carney went through the room.”

So she had! Perhaps—perhaps, after all, it had not been a dream! Victoria felt a sudden and unaccountable weakness, and she was forced to sit down for a moment. Surely it could not have been Dave Carney who had thus entered the house of his benefactors!

“Sophy,” said Victoria, “don’t say anything about that dream, will you? Promise me that you won’t tell any one that you dreamed that about Dave.”

“Why, no, Vic; I won’t, if you don’t want me to; but why not? Why can’t I tell?”

“I have good reasons, Sophy dear, but I haven’t time to explain them now; but you know it is fun to have a secret with me, isn’t it?”

“Oh, very well,” said Sophy, greatly pleased with the idea. “Yes, I do love secrets with you, Vic. I’ll never tell.”

Downstairs all was in confusion. The dining-room had apparently been entered first, for the most thorough work had been done here. Drawers stood open, closets and sideboard were in confusion. The china had been left untouched, but the silver candlesticks and the old snuffers with their tray were gone, and some small articles in silver and plated ware which had not been carried upstairs at night with the table silver and the service.

A clock, which had stood upon the dining-room mantel-shelf, had been carried into the parlor and left there. No doubt the man or men had been frightened off by the noise which Honor made when she set down her pitcher and afterwards opened her window, for her room was over the parlor. They had gone out by way of the front door, for it was found unbolted. No other door or window had been disturbed, and it was reasonable to suppose that one man had entered by way of Victoria’s room and had then opened the front door to the others, if others there were.

It was astonishing that the man—who no doubt was the one in the shrubbery whom Katherine had heard—should have chosen the exact time during which Victoria was absent from the room to climb up over the dining-room window, and that he had not seen Victoria, when she was sitting in her room, as she said she had been doing for more than an hour. It could only be explained by the fact that she had sat in a low chair a little back from the window, and completely in the shadow. He had probably been watching from the shrubbery, and, not seeing any one and finding the window conveniently open, had determined to enter in that way, whatever his previous plans may have been; and he had chosen exactly the right moment for doing it.

Naturally enough, the Starrs were greatly excited by this occurrence, and none more so than Mrs. Wentworth Ward. She quite resented the fact that she had slept peacefully and unconsciously through the whole episode, and seemed to take it as a personal grievance that she had not awakened and descended in person to confront the burglar. The opportunity for that having passed by, she consoled herself by making active investigations into the amount of loss that had been sustained by her nieces, and by trying to fit the cap of guilt upon some member of the household.

“It is absurd to think the man got in through Victoria’s room,” said she. “It could not be! Her room is directly next to mine, and I should have heard him. I am a very light sleeper, I assure you. Besides, how could he have had the luck to choose the very time of all others when Victoria was out of the room? What if the vines are torn? That proves nothing. No, no! Depend upon it, some one in this house opened the front door and let them in. You know very little about that extremely ignorant maid of yours. I have no doubt she was an accomplice.”

They had finished breakfast when Mrs. Ward made this statement and were again in the parlor, and while they were talking, Mr. Madison was seen approaching the house. He had come to ask Honor and Katherine to go out on the river with his sister and himself that afternoon.

When he came in, Victoria glanced quickly from one sister to the other. She was surprised to see that Honor was the one who looked embarrassed. Her color certainly changed, and her manner was somewhat stiff. Katherine, on the contrary, greeted the newcomer with her customary frankness.

“You are just the very one we need,” said she. “Here we lone, lorn women—the only man in the family laid up with a broken leg—have been robbed! The only wonder is that we were not murdered as well.”

They told him the history of the night, and Madison’s advice was that the matter should be placed in the hands of detectives at once. He offered to do it for them, and thought it probable that their property would be recovered, as such articles as the clock, and various other things that had been taken from the parlor, would be of no use to the burglars unless they were pawned. The silver candlesticks, on the contrary, could be melted down.

“I think it couldn’t have been a very experienced thief,” said Roger. “An old hand would have known better than to take plated things, as you say some of them were. However, we will tell the whole story to the detective. Suppose you leave things here just as they are. I will bring a man out from Boston in the first train I can get. I could telegraph, I suppose, for one to come, but it is just as well to move quietly in these matters, and perhaps it will not take any longer to go to town. I am inclined myself to the theory that the man came in the second-story window. The open door which Miss Victoria found, and the torn vines seem to point to that.”

“I do not agree with you,” said Mrs. Wentworth Ward. “My nieces, Mr. Madison, quite against my better judgment, have insisted upon employing two very inferior servants. One is the kitchen maid, who knows absolutely nothing—in fact, to use a slang expression to which I seriously object—is as green as the island she came from. The other is a farm boy, whom they picked up no one knows where. I have no doubt that he could give some information in regard to this robbery. Ellen Higgins, my own maid, who is here, tells me that this boy is behaving most unaccountably this morning. When he heard of the robbery, he first became very pale indeed, and then turned very red, and since then he has shown every evidence of guilt. In addition to this, with my own eyes I saw him going into a Boston pawnbroker’s shop a day or two ago, as I told my niece Victoria only yesterday.”

“Well, we will tell all that to the detectives,” said Madison. “They will soon find out who the guilty one is.”

As he spoke, his glance fell upon Victoria. At the mention of Dave Carney she too had become very white. She was thinking of Sophy’s dream. She almost wished that she could get speech with Roger Madison alone. She should like to tell him the whole story and ask him if there were not some way of saving Dave from the iron hand of the law. She felt that if he were arrested, it would stain his reputation forever.

She did not for a moment believe that he was guilty, and yet—there was Sophy’s dream! Was it her duty to tell Mr. Madison this, or not? She would certainly not give her Aunt Sophia the benefit of the information. In the meantime Peter spoke.

“I know more about Dave Carney than any of you,” said he, “and you needn’t try to make me think that he had anything to do with it. I’ve been with him a lot, and I know him, and nobody has any right to say anything about him in connection with it.”

But confidently as Peter spoke he too felt uneasy, for he distinctly remembered the occasion of his first meeting with Carney.

He had been stealing apples!

CHAPTER XVII.

ON THE RIVER.

VICTORIA concluded that if she wished to save Dave Carney, her best course was to say nothing to Mr. Madison. He would not be influenced by any feeling of pity for Dave, she feared, and if he knew that Sophy had imagined that the boy passed through the room, he would consider it his duty to tell the detective of the fact.

Victoria remembered that Sophy had been very confident when the incident occurred that she had not been dreaming, and the torn vines and the open door proved conclusively that some one had climbed in at the window. Victoria in her own mind was almost if not entirely convinced that it was Carney, but there was nothing to cause any one else to suspect him,—with the exception of her aunt, who suspected him on principle,—and if Victoria remained silent, she hoped that the boy would escape.

But then, again, was this course right? If Carney were so depraved as to steal from the family who had treated him with such kindness, surely it was their duty to deliver him into the hands of justice. Victoria knew that this would be Roger Madison’s opinion. She had just determined to say nothing and to allow matters to take their course without interference from her, when something which Peter said to her again unsettled her.

The boy was in the hammock, which was hung across one end of the piazza directly in front of the dining-room window. Seeing Victoria within, where she was busily washing the breakfast dishes, he called to her to come to him.

“What do you want?” asked Victoria, appearing on the other side of the wire screen at the window, with a saucer in her hand which she was vigorously wiping with a crash towel. “I’m awfully busy, Peter. It is ironing day, you know, and Honor and Katherine are making the beds, so I have to do the breakfast things alone. Sophy is helping me, but—you know what that means!”

“I want to speak to you,” said Peter, raising himself on one arm, and lowering his voice to a mysterious whisper. “It’s really very important, Vic. About last night, you know. Can’t you come out here a minute? Is any one else in there?”

“Only Sophy.”

“Not Aunt Sophia?”

“No; she is upstairs.”

“Oh, then do come out, quick! It’s a good chance. And shut that window. I don’t want any one inside to hear me.”

Victoria saw that he had really something of importance to communicate, so, leaving several articles upon the tray for Sophy to wipe during her absence, and giving her strict injunctions to be careful, she closed the dining-room window, and went around through the door to Peter on the piazza.

“Have you seen Carney this morning?” he asked eagerly.

Victoria started. The mention of Carney’s name fitted so exactly with her own thoughts.

“No,” she replied.

“Vic, do you think it could have been he? I wasn’t going to let on to Aunt Sophia that I thought it for a minute, but I do feel kind of shaky about it.”

“Why, Peter, do you really?” said Victoria. “Wouldn’t it—at least, why should he have chosen that way of letting the burglars in? If it was really Dave who opened the door, I should think he could have found some other way of doing it. He is around the kitchen so much, he might have left a window unbolted, or something of that sort. It would have been easier than climbing up to my room. And now I come to think of it, Dave knew that was my room. He came up there once, to hang my book shelves. He never would have been so stupid as to climb in that way!”

Victoria’s tone expressed a sense of relief. She had not thought of this before. She almost forgot her surprise at Peter’s suspicions.

“But, Vic,” said her brother, “I must tell you something I have never told anybody, and it kind of bothers me. I never told you what Carney was doing when I first saw him.”

“No. Was it anything wrong, Peter?”

“He was—now don’t you tell any one, Vic, unless we decide that we had better. Now mind you don’t!”

“No, I won’t. Hurry, for I hear Sophy calling.”

“He was stealing apples from a barrel outside of a provision store in Fordham.”

“Peter!”

“Yes, he was! I caught him at it. He said he hadn’t any money to buy anything to eat, and he was awfully hungry, so I gave him some. And then he helped me,—in that fight, you know,—and he came home with me.” Peter could not yet endure to mention the name of Sirius.

“He seemed like such a nice fellow,” he continued, “and I thought it would be a shame to give him a bad name by saying he’d been stealing. I knew Honor would never have him here if I did, so I just kept quiet about that, and didn’t even tell you, but I thought I had better to-day. I don’t believe for a minute, though, that he had anything to do with the robbery. I can’t think it, can you?”

“I don’t know what to think,” said Victoria, again remembering Sophy’s so-called dream.

At that moment a loud crash sounded from within.

“Dear me,” cried Victoria, running into the house; “I do believe Sophy has broken something!”

She found her small sister gazing in dismay at the floor, which was strewn with broken glass.

“I never meant to!” she wailed, when she saw Victoria. “Indeed, Vic, I never meant to! I was only going to help you carry the tumblers to the china closet, and they all began to slip, and slide, and tumble off the tray. Is that the reason they’re called tumblers, Vic? Because they always tumble off? I never touched a tumbler when it didn’t tumble. Tell me, Vic, is it? Oh, I’m awful sorry, but I was only helping!”

“I suppose you were, but, oh dear!” said Victoria, hurrying away for the dust-pan and brush with which to sweep up the broken glass. “This is a day of misfortunes! What the burglars have left you have broken.”

“Oh, not everything, Vic! How can you say so? There’s all the china, dishes, and plates, and cups and saucers, and everything. I haven’t broken those.”

“No, and please don’t try to,” said her sister, struggling to remain calm and not to scold Sophy. A dozen good tumblers in atoms, and how could they spare the money to buy more?

“I never tried to!” cried Sophy, bursting into tears and burying her face in a dish-towel. “Oh, how can you say so? I never tried to break ’em!”

But for the first time in her life, Victoria turned a deaf ear to Sophy’s lamentations, and the child fled upstairs to Honor for consolation. She found her eldest sister in her own room. She was standing in the middle of the floor and she was directly confronted by B. Lafferty, who, with her hands on her hips, was haranguing her young mistress with all the eloquence at her command.

Sophy forgot her own grievance in wonder as to what Blanch could be talking about, and sidling up to Honor, she dried her tears and listened, her big brown eyes fastened upon the crimson countenance of the housemaid.

“I tell yer, I’m agoin’ ter go this very minute!” said Blanch. “I ain’t agoin’ ter stay where insults is heaped upon me. I’ve put up with the imperence of that proud an’ hotty girl long enough. Sayin’ she’s allus lived on Beacon Street an’ ain’t never lived in the country afore! An’ has allus been in the house with three others, a cook, a laundress, an’ an upstairs girl! An’ now she an’ yer aunt be afther sayin’ as it was me as let in the burglars, an’ me as sound asleep as anything an’ adreamin’ o’ the ould counthry, an niver a word did I hear of any burglars till I come down this mornin’ an’ was agoin’ ter set the table for breakfast, an’ lo an’ behold, all the drawers an’ the closets was astandin’ open an’ I not knowin’ at all what it all mint. An’ yer know yerself as Miss Vic’s windy and doore was astandin’ wide open an’ the burglar walked in that way as sure as anything, an’ they be afther sayin’ as it was me or young Dave Carney as let ’em in, as honest a young feller as iver I seen. Oh, I tell yer—”

“Just wait a minute, Blanch,” interposed Honor. “I do not think that you had anything to do with the robbery. Neither do my sisters, and we are the ones to whom you are accountable. If you go away in the next train, as you threaten to do, you will make others suspect you as well as my aunt. It will look exactly as if you were afraid of being caught and were running off. The detective who is coming out this morning will certainly say that you had something to do with it if he finds that you have gone, whereas if you stay quietly here and go about your work as usual, no one will dream of accusing you.”

There was an amount of common sense in this statement which B. Lafferty, excited though she was, could not fail to recognize.

“Very well,” said she, “I’ll stay till termorrow, but longer than that I couldn’t put up with that girl from Beacon Street. It’s long enough I’ve been afther standin’ it, and me keepin’ stiddy company with a widder man an’ havin’ the chance to git married any day I’ll set!”

And so saying she departed to the kitchen, leaving her mistress, who had recently been having a discussion with her aunt, strongly of the opinion that residents of Beacon Street were indeed difficult to live with.

It was not long before Roger Madison returned, bringing with him a detective. The man carefully examined the premises, took a list of the missing articles with an exact description of them all, and interviewed each member of the household.

There seemed to be no doubt that the person whom Katherine had heard in the shrubbery had entered through the window in Victoria’s room. Although Mrs. Wentworth Ward named her suspicions of both Blanch and Dave Carney to the detective, he did not seem inclined to agree with her in regard to the former. Honor had been given a very good account of the Irishwoman’s honesty when she engaged her, and there had been nothing since she lived with them to cause her to doubt it.

As to Carney, that was a different matter. When the detective questioned him, he became very much confused and gave most unsatisfactory replies; and yet it seemed impossible that a boy who was familiar with the house, and knew that two members of the family occupied the room over the dining-room, should have chosen that means of entering. The detective could determine nothing as yet.

After he had gone back to Boston, and the affairs of the family had resumed their accustomed regularity, Victoria’s thoughts reverted to the matter which had been troubling her the evening before. There seemed to be no one to whom she could speak upon the subject. She attempted to draw Honor into conversation about it, but with no result. Honor replied rather shortly that her mind was too much occupied with the robbery to think of anything else. Naturally, to speak to Katherine was out of the question, and after all, said Victoria to herself, why was it necessary to speak to any one? It was only the foolish habit that they all had of talking over their troubles together, that made her anxious to do so on this occasion.

“I may just as well learn to do without it,” thought she. “It is a good chance to begin. I have several things on my mind now. Katherine, the etchings, and Dave. Secrets and responsibilities seem to be multiplying. I think I’ll slip off to the grove and have a good think all to myself.”

This was not so easy of accomplishment as might appear at first sight, but after having promised Aunt Sophia that the afternoon should be devoted to her correspondence, and having established Peter and Sophy at a game of halma, and leaving Katherine at the piano and Honor at the sewing-machine, Victoria departed to the pine grove.

It was a warm day, and now at noon the sun shone down with oppressive heat. The weather, which had been unusually cool during the past few days for the season of the year, had suddenly changed, and a hot wave had reached that part of the country and was about to envelop them with its relentless intensity. There was not a breath of air in the grove, and the aromatic smell of the pine needles which covered the ground like a thick carpet seemed to add to the heat.

Victoria wondered if it would be cooler on the river, drawn up in the shadow of the bank. She went to the little boathouse and loosing the old boat, she stepped into it and pushed out into midstream. Then with one oar she paddled close up to shore and made herself fast to a convenient stump.

The boat was not a very comfortable craft, and it was inclined to leak, but by sitting with her feet carefully tucked to one side, she managed to avoid the pools of water in the bottom. The Starrs had long wished for a canoe, and their father had intended to buy one for them. After his death there was no money with which to get it, although Katherine had made known her intention more than once of buying one as soon as she had saved enough.

“I don’t believe she will, though,” said Victoria to herself, as she leaned her head upon her hands and prepared for a “good think.” “I really believe Katherine is growing a tiny mite more economical. She hasn’t bought anything at all, lately. I wonder if it is because of her interest in her music and—and the Madisons.”

The name had scarcely crossed her mind when she was startled by a voice that seemed to be very close to her. She had been so absorbed in her thoughts that she had not heard the gentle dip of a paddle nor the slight sound in the water of an approaching canoe. Turning quickly, she found that Roger Madison had drawn up directly alongside.

“Did I startle you?” he said. “I beg your pardon. I thought you would hear me coming. No, to be quite truthful, I didn’t really think so. I wanted to catch you, and not give you a chance to run away from me, as usual. No, you needn’t look up there,” he added, seeing that Victoria’s glance involuntarily sought the river bank, which was high and particularly steep at this point. “You couldn’t possibly climb up there, if you were to try, without falling back into the river, and I should have to rescue you from a watery grave.”

“A muddy one, I think,” said Victoria, laughing in spite of her desire for flight. She could not help liking Roger Madison, much as she wished to avoid him. She had liked him that memorable day in the picture store; and since then what a good friend he had proved himself to be! He had saved Peter’s life, he had come again and again to see the boy, and had done much, Victoria felt confident, to help him to bear his accident patiently; and now to-day he had taken all this trouble in regard to the robbery.

“I have long been waiting for this chance,” said Madison; “and, now that it has come, I intend to make the most of it, and you shall not be allowed to escape until you have explained matters. I felt that I was staying out of town for some good reason to-day, and now it is explained. It was to see you. I want to know why you always try to avoid me. Have I ever done anything to make you dislike me?”

“Never!” replied Victoria, with such emphasis that there was no doubting her sincerity.

“Then why do you run away whenever I come within speaking distance?”

“I should think you would know,” said she. “It is because you were the man who bought that etching.”

“But I don’t see the connection,” said Roger. “Why should that make you wish to avoid me? You didn’t cheat me. The etching was worth all I gave you for it. It was simply a matter of business. If you feel that you must avoid all the people you have ever transacted any business with—”

“But it wasn’t worth all that you gave me for it,” cried Victoria, turning towards him her flushed and troubled face, and, in her excitement, allowing her feet to slip down into the bottom of the boat. “It wasn’t! That is just it! You gave me more than you should have done; and I accepted it, which was dreadful! When I came home and told the girls about it, Honor hoped that I should never see you again. She felt very badly about it, and so did I. I didn’t dare tell them that it was you. That is the reason I ran away the day we went to call on your sister and I saw you in the parlor. The girls couldn’t understand it, and have never been able to since.”

“Then they don’t know it yet?”

“No. I have never dared tell them.”

“Then don’t tell them now, will you? It might prejudice them against me.”

“I won’t if I can help it,” said Victoria. “They asked me last night about it, and said that Sophy repeated something I said yesterday afternoon. I think I should have told them then if Katherine hadn’t heard that noise in the shrubbery just at that minute, and we were interrupted.”

“But I wish you would explain why you feel so,” said Roger, with a puzzled expression upon his face. “Why did you wish to avoid me? Why did you never wish to see me again? I can’t understand.”

“Dear me, you are very dense!” exclaimed Victoria. “It is as simple as possible, I’m sure! In the first place, I took ten dollars more from you, or five dollars at least, than I should have done, because there was no reason why you should give me more than you would have paid in the store. Then, it—well, Honor felt dreadfully about having let me go to Boston to sell those etchings, and said I ought not to have gone alone, and you, ‘the young man,’ would think it very strange that I was allowed to go when I was so young, and she should have gone with me. That is the reason she hoped we should never see you again. Then when you came here to live I couldn’t tell her that you were the one, because she had felt uncomfortable about calling on your sister anyhow.”

“But why?” asked Madison. “Didn’t she like our looks?”

“Oh, not that at all! Because we are so poor and are working for our living. She felt that you were strangers and perhaps wouldn’t understand, and perhaps wouldn’t want us to call upon you or know you. You see, we haven’t always been so, and it makes it harder. We had great difficulty, Katherine and I, in getting her to go, and when she finally did and liked you all so much I couldn’t bear to spoil it by telling her.”

“I see,” said Roger. “And you won’t spoil it now by telling her, either, because—well, we are such capital friends now and it might make a difference. Wait until—until I know her better. Then we will tell her, you and I together, and have a good laugh over it. But I want to say something to you, Miss Victoria. You needn’t feel in that way about the etching. I happen to know that the picture dealer sold the others for thirty-five dollars each, and mine gave so much pleasure to my sister, to whom I gave it, that it is worth far more to me. I have never regretted buying it, I assure you. And I also want to tell you how much we admire and respect you for the way in which you have all done. So far from our not understanding, we had heard about you before we came, and were most anxious to meet you. We feel proud to know you. Would you mind shaking hands with me?”

Victoria promptly extended her hand, which was warmly grasped by the occupant of the other boat.

“You won’t run away any more,” said he, “will you?”

“No indeed! I’m thankful I don’t have to. You have done me a lot of good. It is one of the things I came down here to think over. You see I had no one to speak to about it, and I really seem to need some one always to talk things over with.”

“It is a great comfort. My sister and I have that habit, too. Can’t you talk the other ‘things’ over with me? You say this was one of them, so there must be more.”

Victoria blushed and turned away.

“Oh, no!” she said. “The others I shall have to keep to myself—except Dave Carney. I could consult you about him, but I think I had better not.”

“Do you mean in connection with the robbery?”

“Yes; and yet I don’t want to put it into words. I wish I could have a little talk with Dave myself.”

“Why don’t you?” said Madison. “It would be more efficacious than anything I could do. You might induce him to tell you something.”

Victoria was silent for a moment. Then she suddenly looked at her feet.

“I am positively sitting with my feet in the river!” said she. “This leaky old boat is no good at all, and my shoes are soaking wet. I shall have to go right in and change them.”

“I suppose I shall have to allow you to go under those circumstances,” said Roger, as he pushed out of the way and watched her unfasten her boat, in the doing of which she scorned his proffered assistance. “But I am glad we have had this explanation. You won’t run away from me any more, will you?”

“No,” said Victoria, smiling brightly at him and disappearing within the shelter of the old boathouse. “I won’t run away from you any more.”

CHAPTER XVIII.

MRS. WENTWORTH WARD CHANGES HER OPINION.

“BEFORE I’d be afraid of a toad!”

“But, Peter, you’re not afraid of anything.”

“And you’re afraid of everything, so there’s the difference. I never saw such a girl. Snakes, and lizards, and toads, and spiders, and wasps—there isn’t a thing you’re not afraid of.”

“Yes, there is, too!” said Sophy, indignantly. “I’m not afraid of flies or butterflies or caterpillars—yes, I am afraid of caterpillars. They’re so fuzzy.”

“There, you see there is hardly anything! As for flies and butterflies, why, of course a baby wouldn’t mind them.”

“But what’s the use of those other things, Peter? What’s the use of wasps?”

“Wasps! Why, they’re very useful. They don’t hurt you unless you bother them, and they eat up slugs, and some kinds of caterpillars.”

“Well, wasps are very frightening, I think, even if they are useful, and so are hop toads, and hop toads are so ugly! Oh, here comes one now! Go away, you horrid, naughty toad!”

Peter and Sophy were on the piazza in the early twilight. Honor and Katherine were with the Madisons on the river, enjoying a picnic tea. Supper at Glen Arden was over, and Mrs. Wentworth Ward had walked to the village for her “constitutional,” which the hot weather had prevented during the day. Victoria had gone in search of Dave Carney, whom she thought she should be apt to find at liberty at this hour. It was the evening of the day upon which the robbery had been discovered.

“There is no use in an ugly toad, Peter,” continued Sophy.

“Indeed there is!” said her brother, in a tone of marked masculine superiority. “That just shows how little you know about things. Toads are regular policemen.”

“Peter! What do you mean? Do they arrest people?”

“No, of course not, you goosie! But they arrest insects. If you put toads into hotbeds or cold-frames, they’ll eat up all the bugs and worms that come after the plants. They keep regular guard, just as policemen do. There, do you hear that tree toad now?”

Sophy listened to the shrill song of the little creature that appeared to be sitting upon the branch of a tree close by.

“They’re as good as hop toads, for they eat caterpillars, and worms, and hateful flies that lay their eggs under the bark of the trees, and would eat up the trees if it were not for the toads.”

“I’m glad they eat caterpillars as well as the wasps,” said Sophy. “They’re so disagreeable. Why do you suppose caterpillars were made, Peter?”

“Oh, I don’t know, I’m sure. To eat up something else, I suppose, and to be food for toads. I’ll tell you another funny thing about hop toads. They never will touch a dead insect or bug or anything. They’ll only catch them alive. Isn’t that queer?”

“How much you do know, Peter!” said his sister, admiringly. “I wish I knew as much as you do. I’m going to keep asking questions all my life, and then perhaps some day I shall know as much.”

“You never will, for you are only a girl, and I’m a boy. You’ll never know as much as I do, for I shall always keep ahead of you. First place, I’m nearly five years older than you, and then, I’m a boy.”

“Oh, I know you think it’s very grand to be a boy,” said Sophy, still keeping a watchful eye upon the extremely active hop toad which with other members of its family had come forth from beneath the piazza for a hop in the evening air; “but some girls know a good deal. I was asking Mr. Madison about it the other day, and he said some girls knew as much as boys did, and when they grew up some women knew as much as some men. I think Mr. Madison likes girls better than you do, Peter. I think he likes Honor and Katherine very much indeed. He is always coming here to get them to go somewhere.”

“I know he is,” rejoined Peter. “I like Mr. Madison ever so much, and I think he’s a jolly good fellow, and I like the way he talks, usually, but he’s awfully silly about girls. We were having such an interesting talk the other day about animals and birds when Honor happened to come along, and he stopped right off short and walked off with her up to the house, and never came back to the trees where we were sitting at all! Oh, he’s downright silly about girls, and I don’t think you had better go by what he says about them.”

The dialogue was interrupted at this point by Victoria. She came up across the grass from the barn to the steps at the end of the piazza. There she paused.

“Peter,” said she, “have you seen Dave lately?”

“No, I haven’t seen him since—oh, I can’t think when it was.”

“Try and remember. I want to know particularly.”

“I guess it was before dinner. I saw him go across the garden towards the Ashmont road. I wondered where he was going.”

“I’m going around to the kitchen for a minute,” said Victoria, “and then I’ll come back.”

She was absent for five or ten minutes. When she returned, it was with a very grave face.

“Peter,” she said, “I’m very much afraid Dave has run away.”

“Vic! What do you mean?”

“Blanch says he hasn’t been in the kitchen since breakfast time. After the detective was here she saw him come out of the barn in very old clothes, and she thought he was going out to the farthest field to work. He went over in that direction.”

“Yes,” said Peter, eagerly, “that’s the way I saw him go.”

“He didn’t come in to dinner, and when she asked Wilson, the man who is working here to-day, you know, where he was, Wilson said that Dave said he had to go down to Fordham to get something, and he wouldn’t be home to dinner. Wilson supposed he was just going to take his noon hour to go down there, but he has never come back.”

“Why didn’t they tell us before?” asked Peter, impatiently.

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Victoria. “You know what B. Lafferty is. She is dreadfully stupid about such things, and when I said something about it,—that she ought to have told us,—she said she wasn’t going to let on to that proud and haughty person from Beacon Street that her suspicions were correct.”

“Did she mean Aunt Sophia?” asked Sophy, who had forgotten her fear of the toads and was listening with eager attention.

“No; she meant Ellen Higgins, I suppose. Both Ellen and Aunt Sophia think that Dave had something to do with the robbery; and, do you know, Peter, it looks very much like it, now that Dave has gone.”

“Yes,” said Peter, very solemnly, “it really does. Oh, Vic, I never should have believed it of him, should you? I liked him so much. I can’t think so even now. I believe we’ll find out yet that he didn’t have anything to do with it. Maybe he was taken ill somewhere, or something has happened, and he can’t get back. I can’t believe it was he.”

But the other members of the family did not agree with Peter. When they heard the news of Carney’s disappearance, they looked at one another with troubled faces. They had all liked the lad; and the discovery that he had deceived them and had treated them with such base ingratitude, after all that had been done for him, filled them with disappointment and real sorrow.

Mrs. Wentworth Ward was, of course, triumphant. She plumed herself upon her superior cleverness in having suspected the boy from the first; and she soundly berated the detective for having neglected to arrest him at once. Now the thief had escaped, and there was no knowing when he would be found. With this exception, therefore, the Starrs awaited further developments with ill-concealed anxiety.

Honor and Katherine were very busy during these summer days; and even the intense heat which was raging at present did not keep them from their work. As soon as school had come to an end,—early in June,—they began upon their preserving. Glen Arden was famous for its currants and cherries, as well as for its apple and pear trees. As each fruit ripened, the huge kettle was brought out, a quantity of sugar ordered, and every available hand was brought into service.

Miss Madison, coming one morning to ask for Katherine’s assistance with some new music, found all so busy that she forgot her violin and, begging a large apron, sat down at the dining-room table with the others and began to stone cherries with vigor and enthusiasm.

Strawberries, when they came in season, were ordered in large quantities from the market, as not enough were grown upon the place to answer the purpose. In due time, currant jelly was to be put up, and the pears—for this was a pear year—were to be turned to account.

Mrs. Ward had ordered a liberal quantity of all varieties of preserves, and a message came from Mrs. Madison begging that she also might have the privilege of ordering some. All that were left were to be sent to the Woman’s Exchange in Boston, to be sold.

It was hot work, no doubt, and there were pleasanter things to be done in summer time than stirring with a long spoon in a kettle full of steaming fruit; but it was a source of great satisfaction to the girls to feel that they were making money as well now as when school and music pupils occupied their time, and it was certainly a far more entertaining way than that. The preserving days at Glen Arden proved to be the gayest of the summer; and Roger Madison, hearing about them from his sister, deliberately remained away from his law office one morning and, presenting himself at Glen Arden, begged for something to do, upon which they set him to stemming currants, with strict injunctions not to taste.

The week which followed the robbery passed away in this wise, and then one morning came the information that the stolen silver had been traced. Some of the articles had been found in a pawn-shop in Boston, having been left there by a young man—almost a boy, in fact—of slight figure, and with very light tow-colored hair. His eyes were peculiar, and would probably lead to his detection. They had a way of shifting uneasily, and of not meeting those of the person to whom he spoke.

This description fitted Dave exactly, with the exception of the part referring to the eyes. Dave had very good eyes, the Starrs thought, and a perfectly straightforward manner.

“Probably, since he did this dreadful thing,” said Victoria, sadly, “his eyes have changed.”

“I don’t believe he did it,” said Peter, stubbornly. “I shall never believe it unless he tells me so himself.”

Within a very short time, the suspected burglar was arrested, and it was found that his name was Carney! Roger Madison went to the jail to see him, and there, to his astonishment, found that it was James, and not David Carney. This young man closely resembled him, to be sure, but he was older, and his face had a totally different expression. He was David’s brother. His accomplice was also arrested, a much older man than himself, and most of the stolen property was recovered.

The question now was, where was Dave? Was he also implicated, and had he for that reason run away? At all events, he had completely disappeared, and as the summer days passed by, and still there was no word of him, the Starrs gave up all hope of ever seeing him again. They did not wish, however, that any search should be made for him.

The elder Carney confessed that he had entered the house by way of the second-story window, which proved that Sophy had not dreamed that he went through the room, while his close resemblance to his brother easily accounted for the mistake of thinking that it was Dave. The only wonder was, that no one had remembered the brother before, but as he had been seen only by Peter and Sophy, perhaps that was not surprising.

One day, in early September, when the sky was blue, and goldenrod and asters were in bloom, when the birds were preparing for their flight southward, and squirrels were busy with their preparations for the winter, Victoria, Peter, and Sophy were walking home from Ashmont, two miles away. They left the road at a certain point, and striking into the woods, followed a scarcely perceptible path, which would in time bring them to their own pasture land.

It was a glorious day to be out of doors, and in the free woods. The air was cool and crisp, and yet the sun had a certain warmth which was good to feel when they emerged from the woods and found themselves beneath the open sky.

Peter’s leg was entirely well now, and he walked without even the suggestion of a limp. The accident had been a severe trial in many ways, but his sisters had said to one another more than once during the summer, that Peter had borne it manfully, and had proved that he was possessed of plenty of pluck. He was much less impatient of control, than he once had been, and indeed the girls were less exacting. Honor and Katherine discovered, slowly but surely, that there were other ways of influencing Peter, and probably all boys, than by argument or command, and they acknowledged, at last, that Victoria’s method was more efficacious than theirs.

“Suppose we sit on the rock for a while,” said Vic, as they walked along the cart road in the pasture. “It is too lovely to go indoors, or even to go home. Vacation will soon be over, and we had better make the most of our few days. Heigh-ho! I don’t want to go back to school a bit. I did hope that I could stay at home after this, and help the others, but they all seem to think it is more my duty to go for another year.”

They had climbed the huge mass of rock which long ages ago had been piled there in gigantic confusion. Lichen grew over it now, bushes had found root in the crevices, and mosses and grass made soft resting-places upon the top. It was Victoria’s favorite spot upon the place, and she particularly loved it on a golden September day like the present one.

“I shouldn’t think you’d mind your school a bit,” said Peter. “What would you do if you had to go to that hateful one that I go to? Do you know, Vic, I’ve half a mind to accept Aunt Sophia’s offer and go to boarding-school?”

“Peter, you don’t really mean it?”

“Yes, I do. I was talking to Mr. Madison the other day, and he advised me to. He thinks I’ll get a better education. And after all, Vic, it’s pretty good of Aunt Sophia to offer it again after our refusing everything last winter.”

“I know,” said Victoria; “I feel as if we had misjudged Aunt Sophia. She means to be kind to us, and if she has that unfortunate way of acting as if she wanted to run the entire universe, I suppose we ought to make the best of it. It is only her disposition, and as she has had plenty of money all her life, and no one to interfere with her, I suppose there is some excuse for it. She really has been very nice this summer, and it didn’t turn out as badly as I was afraid it would. After all, Peter, I think you are right. We oughtn’t to refuse everything she offers, and it would be of great advantage to you to go to St. Asaph’s. If only she allows the rest of us to continue to earn our living in peace!”

“Look, Vic!” exclaimed Sophy, in an excited whisper. “Who is that peeping up over the river bank? Look, Peter!”

They gazed in the direction that Sophy indicated, but could see nothing.

“I’m sure it was somebody,” continued Sophy, still in the same eager whisper, “and it looked like Dave Carney!”

At this Peter jumped to his feet, and nimbly leaping from rock to rock, ran to the river bank some little distance away. The girls watched him. They saw that he was speaking to some one below the bank. He did not return, and unable to restrain their curiosity further, they too left the rock and followed him. They found him in earnest conversation with a boy in a boat, and that boy was David Carney.

“Why, Dave!” cried Victoria; “have you come back? I am so glad to see you!”

Dave shyly pulled off his cap.

“He says he hasn’t come back to us,” said Peter. “He didn’t mean us to see him. He only came to take a look at the place.”

“Why did you run away, Dave?” asked Victoria.

“I ran away because I knowed it was Jim,” said Carney, looking up at her as she stood above him on the bank. “He always said he was agoing to break into your house sometime. He wanted me to help, but I wouldn’t have nothing to do with it. That made him mad, and we had a quarrel. Jim got into bad company down at Fordham, and I guess they got him into this scrape.”

“I always thought your brother couldn’t be a very nice person,” said Sophy, who had been watching Dave with round and solemn eyes. “He used regular swear words that day I met him with you.”

“I’d have been as bad myself if it hadn’t been for you folks,” said Dave. “I’d have gone straight after him if you hadn’t caught me that time when I was stealing those apples,” he added, looking at Peter. “I only did that because I was hungry. It was the first time, but I guess it wouldn’t have been the last. That morning when they told me there’d been a robbery, I knowed it was Jim, and I couldn’t stay. I knowed you’d think it was me that done it if I ran away, but I couldn’t stay in the place where you folks had been so good to me, and my own brother had broke into the house.”

“And what have you been doing ever since?” asked Peter.

“I hid for a few days. Then I heard Jim was caught, so after that I went to Boston and got some work off and on down on the wharves. I’m out of it now, and I came out to Fordham, and a fellow I know loaned me this here boat, and I couldn’t help coming up to see how it looked here. I didn’t mean you to see me.”

“And will you come back to us now?” asked Peter.

“Come back!” repeated Dave. “You don’t want me to come back, and me running away, and having a brother in jail for robbing you?”

“Why, of course! I never supposed you had anything to do with it. I said so all along.”

Dave’s eyes rested upon the other boy’s face with an expression of dog-like devotion. Then he turned to Victoria.

“No, he never did think so,” said she; “but I must confess, Dave, that when you ran away, the rest of us doubted you. But we must talk to my sisters about it. Will you come up to-night and hear what they think?”

And Carney promised that he would.

The Starrs returned to the house in great excitement, eager to impart their news to the sisters at once, but they found a still greater surprise awaiting them. On the piazza were Aunt Sophia and Mr. Abbott in earnest conversation. Mr. Abbott, whom they had not seen at Glen Arden for so many months! He had been abroad for his health, and although his wards knew that his steamer was in, they had scarcely expected to see him so soon.

“To tell you the truth, Dickinson,” Mrs. Wentworth Ward was saying as Peter and his sisters came around the corner of the house, “even though I so strongly disapproved of their plans at first, I am really quite proud of the girls. They have done well, and they deserve to succeed. If Peter will only do as I wish and go to St. Asaph’s—”

Here she stopped, for Peter himself came into sight, but her remarks proved that in spite of all that had been said to the contrary, Mrs. Wentworth Ward was broad-minded enough to know when she was mistaken, and generous enough to acknowledge the fact.

Honor and Katherine came home from an errand which they had been doing at almost the same moment that Peter and the younger sisters returned, and the welcome which Mr. Abbott received proved that they were indeed glad to see him again.

There was much to be told to him, the history of the summer and of the robbery, and now the account that Peter and Vic had to give of the meeting with Carney. They were so sure of Dave’s innocence of any complicity in the affair that it was impossible for the others not to be impressed by their story, and even Mrs. Wentworth Ward gave an unwilling assent to his being taken back for another trial. Therefore it was decided that when Dave should come for his answer that night he was to be told to stay.

“But what about these Madisons whom I hear quoted so much?” said Mr. Abbott, looking quizzically from one to the other of his wards.

“The nicest people in the world,” said Katherine, eagerly. “We have had such a lovely time with them this summer, Mr. Abbott! Miss Madison is the most charming woman I ever knew. We play together a great deal, she on the violin and I on the piano. There is a brother, Roger, too, who is very nice. We all like them immensely.”

Victoria, Peter, and Sophy joined in the chorus of praise, as did even Mrs. Wentworth Ward, but Honor was noticeably silent.

Mr. Abbott remained to dinner and even to supper also, staying long enough to see Dave Carney and convince himself, as he did the moment he looked at him, that he was an honest fellow. He also desired to meet Miss Madison and her brother, about whom he had heard so much. When he finally returned to Boston, there was a twinkle in his kind eyes and a satisfied expression upon his face.

He had heard now a complete history of the past year, and he felt confident that the coming one would be even more of a success. The Starrs had tried their wings and had proved that they could fly.

That same evening Mrs. Wentworth Ward called Victoria into her room.

“My dear,” she said, “do you remember what I said to you one day in the early summer in regard to Katherine and young Madison?”

“Yes, Aunt Sophia, I do indeed!” replied Vic.

“I want to tell you something else, then,” said her aunt. “I think I was mistaken. In fact, I find that I have made a number of mistakes about you all. I think now that it is friendship, mere friendship, between him and Katherine. It is very rare, but this time I believe it to be the case. Katherine finds the sister more absorbing and interesting than the brother, and the real object of his interest is not Katherine, but Honor. I think you will find that I am right.”

And after events proved, greatly to Mrs. Wentworth Ward’s own satisfaction, and indeed to that of all concerned, that she had indeed guessed correctly.

And when Honor was told by Roger and Victoria together that he was “the man who bought the etching,” she took the news so quietly that Victoria came to the conclusion that much-dreaded events never turn out to be as unpleasant as one fears that they will be,—a conclusion that was frequently proved to be a true one during the remainder of her life.

THE END.

BOOKS BY ELLEN DOUGLAS DELAND.

MALVERN.  A Neighborhood Story.  341 pages.

With five Illustrations by ALICE BARBER STEPHENS.

Cloth.  $1.50.

A SUCCESSFUL VENTURE.  340 pages.

With five Illustrations by ALICE BARBER STEPHENS.

Cloth. $1.50.

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Table of Contents

A SUCCESSFUL VENTURE

CONTENTS.

ILLUSTRATIONS

CHAPTER I. MRS. WENTWORTH WARD VISITS GLEN ARDEN.

CHAPTER II. THE STARRS HOLD A FAMILY COUNCIL.

CHAPTER III. A DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.

CHAPTER IV. KATHERINE AS A FINANCIER.

CHAPTER V. PETER SEEKS INFORMATION.

CHAPTER VI. PETER’S NEW ACQUAINTANCES.

CHAPTER VII. VICTORIA GOES IN SEARCH OF FUNDS.

CHAPTER VIII. UNEXPECTED GENEROSITY.

CHAPTER IX. SOPHY HAS AN ADVENTURE.

CHAPTER X. THE NEW NEIGHBORS ON THE HILL.

CHAPTER XI. VICTORIA DECIDES TO KEEP IT SECRET.

CHAPTER XII. ROGER MADISON TELLS A STORY.

CHAPTER XIII. PETER MEETS WITH A SERIOUS ACCIDENT.

CHAPTER XIV. SOPHY WAYLAYS ROGER MADISON.

CHAPTER XV. VICTORIA MEETS WITH DIFFICULTIES.

CHAPTER XVI. MIDNIGHT MARAUDERS.

CHAPTER XVII. ON THE RIVER.

CHAPTER XVIII. MRS. WENTWORTH WARD CHANGES HER OPINION.

BOOKS BY ELLEN DOUGLAS DELAND.

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE