the scollard girls of all sizes, and gretta too, closed up around ralph under the light of a street light to gaze at him after his amazing announcement.
"mrs. jones-dexter your great-aunt!" cried happie.
"that fault-finding, snappish person!" gasped laura.
"that lovely little child your cousin!" exclaimed margery.
"there's nothing flattering in your remark, margery. what kind of a cousin would i be likely to have except a lovely little child? you'd expect a family resemblance, wouldn't you?" demanded ralph. "if you girls get wonder-struck and stand bunched up on this corner long, we'll all be run in by a policeman, under the law that forbids push-carts and things blocking the sidewalks."
happie laughed and set an example to the others by moving on at once. "you can't expect us to hear such a surprising piece of news as this unmoved," she said.
"no, but you were hearing it unmoved; that's what i was talking about," retorted ralph. "there's no use in g[100]etting stirred up. mrs. jones-dexter was my mother's aunt before i was born—there's nothing new about it."
"well, but ralph, we should like to hear how it happened," said laura eagerly.
"by her being my grandmother's sister, laura," ralph kindly explained.
"oh, no!" cried laura impatiently. "i mean how she came to be so cross, and you not know her—you don't know her, do you?"
"never saw the lady, never knew she had a granddaughter until this very night as now is," affirmed ralph. "there isn't an interesting story; i'm sorry, for your sake, laura, because you might write music for it. my great-aunt lucinda seems to be a person troubled with chronic, all-round incompatibility. she quarreled with everybody belonging to her if they dared to have a mind of their own. mother always said she had a grievance against the world because it revolved on its own axis. she never had a fuss with mother directly, but she fell out with her sister, mother's mother, when my mother was a little girl, and she wouldn't make up, not if the skies fell—or grandmother fell on her knees. grandmother wasn't a bit like her—dear soul, grandmother was, and it worried her to be on the outs with her sister, but she could never coax her on the ins. and the gentle lucinda included mother in her scrap, because mother was grandmother's daughter, and that's why we never knew her. aunt l[101]ucinda married this immensely wealthy mr. jones-dexter, and after that, when grandmother was dead and mother a widow without much money, why she didn't like to try to patch up the row for fear mrs. jones-dexter would misunderstand her motives. we knew mr. jones-dexter died—he was too rich to die privately, so to speak—and we heard that aunt lucinda quarreled bitterly with her only son—couldn't make him marry the girl she had picked out—and he died 'way off somewhere. this little serena must be his child. i wonder where the mother is? aunt lucinda must have taken her grandchild into favor."
"into favor doesn't express it," said margery. the girls had listened to this outline sketch of family history so intently as to endanger their feet and passers-by, in their oblivion to all else. "she is perfectly wrapped up in her, and her love for her is evidently her absorbing passion. she is so proud of her, so tender of her, looks so adoringly at her that you never saw anything like it! really, i wish you could see your little cousin, ralph, i can't do her justice."
"i'm not likely to see her," said ralph. "very likely aunt lucinda was sorry for driving her son off, especially as people say the girl he cared for was nice in every way, only she wasn't the one his mother had picked out. probably she is conscience-stricken, as unjust, bad-tempered people are at the end, in story books, and she is making up to this little serena for all her life-lo[102]ng injustice. old age ought to count for a good deal, too; that seems to be something that makes the strongest will knuckle under."
"mrs. jones-dexter must be dreadful," said polly with conviction.
"she must have led a dreadful life," said ralph kindly. "it must be pretty bad to have your shoulder bruised your whole life long from keeping chips on it all the time! i'd hate to spend seventy years on the home plate with my bat up, ready to hit any old ball, foul or fair. look out, happie! these are the elevated road stairs. you want to pick up your feet, my child!"
happie laughed. ralph had just saved her from falling, face downward, up the stairs. she was so interested in what he was saying that she had tripped on her own skirt and laura's trailing umbrella.
"you needn't fumble for your pocket book, margery. bob gave me a strip of l tickets to bring you home. he's a terror on insisting on strict justice," said ralph, producing a dark-pink jointed strip of pasteboard and dropping it whole into the ticket chopper's box. "i had precisely the right number for the crowd."
"and we always settle with bob. our car fares are part of the expenses of the tea room," said margery. "we all believe in not being slovenly about such little items."
"i never thought the people in the next flat were lacking in squareness," observed ralph, steadying penny who [103]lurched wildly as the train started. "hold me around the knee, pfennig; there's no use tumbling about until you've grown tall enough to reach the strap!"
"you know you might see little serena jones-dexter," said happie suddenly. she had evidently been following her own line of thought from a remark of ralph's which had long been left behind in the course of the talk.
"easy to see through you, happie!" said ralph. "you've been carrying on the story through several chapters, and you haven't decided whether you will let me—the hero—dash into the burning jones-dexter mansion and bear out the flower-like darling through the flames, or whether you'll inveigle me on the steam-boat from which serena is to tumble overboard for me to rescue, or whether you will just get me down to the tea room when the old lady is expected, take me by my lily white hand and lead me up to that great aunt of mine—say, she is a great old aunt, isn't she?—and say: 'mrs. jones-dexter, look on your long-lost, your beautiful boy!' that's the best way, happie. none know me but to love me, you know, so it's all that's necessary, and it will save the wear and tear on little serena."
"ralph, you perfect goose!" exclaimed happie, half laughing, half teased. for though she had not been entertaining such melodramatic schemes as ralph attributed to her, she had been plotting how to work good to all concern[104]ed by bringing together mrs. jones-dexter and her niece's family.
"i think the tea room is wonderful," said gretta suddenly. "it is so interesting, as well as bringing in so much money. we had such music to-day, ralph! you haven't told ralph about that queer man and how he played."
"hans lieder," said happie. "no, but we never could tell any one how he played! ralph, it was wonderful. he is a man in a cloak and sombrero and he comes so much that we wish—or we did wish—he wouldn't. we were half afraid of him; we called him the mystery, and we thought he looked like mephistopheles. but to-day i talked to him a little while, and i thought he looked sad. he has always seemed interested in laura's playing, and to-day he played for us. ralph, you don't know how he plays! he's a great musician. i wish you could hear him."
laura looked at ralph very seriously. "i am going to write a song for him, words and all. it is going to be very beautiful,—sad, maybe, but beautiful," she said. "i am going to show how he came cloaked and shadowy, like the dawn, and how he burst forth, like the morning, with all the beauty, the music of the world. it will probably be my best song, for i would do anything to pay him for the way he played. i'm not afraid of him, like the girls, because i'm a musician too. musicians and poets are never understood."
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laura looked at ralph with a seriously uplifted expression on her pale little face, and ralph looked down on her perplexed. she was such a funny contrast to the crowded aisle, the jarring car, even to her own thirteen years. ralph never could manage to like laura, nor be patient with her. he rightly thought that she shirked her share of the family burdens, yet, like happie, who understood her better, he was sometimes impressed with the queer child's cleverness shining out through her conceit.
"well, i think i'd go slow on writing songs to mysterious musicians in dramatic cloaks," ralph advised laura now. "what did you say the man's name was?"
"he said when i asked him that we might call him hans lieder, but i'm certain that's not a real name," said happie.
"do you know what i believe?" asked laura standing on tiptoe to whisper so that happie and ralph, but not the crowd around them might hear her. "i believe he is the spirit of chopin come back in another body."
she fell back triumphantly to observe the effect of her words, but it was not what she had intended it to be. happie and ralph shouted out in girl and boy fashion. laura lost her balance as she dropped back and down from her toe tips, the car stopping, lurched forward, and she took an unsentimental header straight into a big man who was reading stock market reports, and whose face turned as angry as the maddest of the wall street bul[106]ls, while his coat felt to laura as shaggy and rough as the coat of the grizzliest bear.
"don't stop to apologize; this is our station," said ralph, taking the bewildered and mortified laura by the arm and pushing her towards the door through the crowd that blocked their way.
it was the rule in the patty-pans that after dinner there were to be lessons every night except sunday and on festivals. it was an undecided question as to whether family birthdays were to be reckoned festivals or not. the trouble was there were so many that celebrating all of them cut off a good many nights from study for children who were limited to night for their lessons. mrs. scollard was her children's teacher. the eldest three had been to school very little, laura less, and polly and penny not at all. mrs. scollard hoped by another year to send laura for the beginning of a musical education, that should include general study, and to launch polly on the sea of school life.
there had never been a choice as to methods of education in margery and happie's case; the loss of fortune that had made the mother the support of the family, had forced the two elder girls early to take up the office of housekeepers who could not be at school.
mrs. scollard felt safer to have the younger ones at home with their sisters while she was away than to let them go to school. so the scollards were homeeducated by the teaching of a mother qualified beyond most women f[107]or her task.
when a birthday came around it was always a question whether it warranted the omission of lessons or not. happie looked imploringly at her mother after dinner and said insinuatingly: "polly was never ten years old until to-night, motherums! don't you think we might mark the occasion by dropping all other lessons and taking up chemistry, demonstrating how heat changes butter, chocolate, milk and sugar into fudge?"
mrs. scollard hesitated and was lost. penny leaped on her lap to hug her for a consent which she read in her mother's eyes, and polly cried in a staid sort of rapture: "this will make my birthday perfect—dancing school and fudge!"
flats are an invention for which to be grateful. without them how would homes be possible to people with little strength, less income and no space? but they have their drawbacks, like everything else in an imperfect world, and not least of these is the way sounds and odors wander from one end of them to the other, owing to the arrangement which happie had called "the patty-pan style of architecture." no one can safely talk secrets in a flat, and no one can brew secret potions, for good intent or ill, in the most distant end of their elongated connections.
happie had her specialty well under way in the little kitchen, and laura, who was still under the spell of the wizard playing of the afternoon, found it impossible to ke[108]ep to her seat at the piano, or the composition of her song, in the fudge-burdened atmosphere of the little parlor. she gave it up, and was coming out to join the less gifted young folk in the kitchen when the bell rang through the little flat; the upper bell, so that whoever had come was already at the threshold, having entered the outer door without ringing below. laura opened the door, and there stood mrs. barker and elsie beautifully attired.
"oh!" ejaculated laura, and it was perfectly evident that her first feeling was dismay, not welcome, her consciousness of the odor of fudge overwhelming hospitality. "yes, mamma is in. and happie and gretta, yes, elsie," laura said, rallying. "if you will please wait a moment, i will call them."
"i wish i could go out where happie is. she's making fudge, i smell it, and we all know happie's fudge of old," said elsie.
"just one minute, elsie, and happie will come. i've no doubt you can go out to see her make the fudge then." laura's dignity was impressive. she carried it with her around the corner of the parlor, into the little hall, but she ran down the latter to the kitchen, shedding the dignity on the way.
"the barkers, of all people!" she announced in a stage whisper. but mrs. scollard did not seem dismayed, and happie said without looking up from the pan which claimed all her attention, "send elsie out here; this is [109]at the point when it can't be left."
mrs. scollard went in at once with laura, who came back to say that mrs. barker would like to see margery, happie and gretta engel, if she might.
"oh, dear, laura, i truly can't leave this fudge now without spoiling it! tell elsie to come out here, and ask mrs. barker if she will be kind enough to give me a quarter of an hour? then we'll all come in. what can the mystery be?" happie asked the question of margery; laura had already departed.
"i think it has something to do with gretta's saving elsie the day of the sleigh ride," whispered margery. "i've been wondering that she didn't hear from the barkers."
"my goodness! they've probably brought her the victoria cross, or the legion of honor, or a carnegie medal, or whatever they give for saving fair maidens! oh, margery, will you go and see that gretta makes herself look her prettiest? if i beat this fudge like mad i'll be ready to go in there by the time you are—she is—ready."
margery willingly departed to see that gretta was a credit to herself and to happie, whose care for the big girl, no younger than she was, amused the patty-pan family. happie was as good as her word, and came into the room where margery was superintending gretta's toilette two minutes before she had finished.
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"i do not see why i must go," gretta was protesting for the fifth time. she had not recovered from her shyness, and dreaded strangers nearly as much as she dreaded a dentist.
"because they have asked for us, all three of us," said happie. "did you ever see such a red face as mine is? please button the middle button of my waist, margery; it's undone. now, courage, gretta! you have already met elsie, to put it mildly, and you needn't mind mrs. barker. you weren't afraid of auntie cam."
it always seemed to margery and happie that gretta looked far better out of doors. there was something dwarfing to her beauty in the patty-pans. still, it was a handsome creature that followed the two scollards into the parlor and rather stiffly laid her hand in mrs. barker's as that lady arose to greet her. elsie kissed her with genuine cordiality. mrs. barker eyed her keenly, and then said:
"they have not exaggerated your good looks, my dear; they positively could not do so. i have never seen you, and now that i do see you how can i thank you for what you did for my little girl?"
happie expected to see gretta sink under the embarrassment of this speech, beginning with the most unlimited flattery and ending in an allusion to her courage. but keen-witted gretta perceived the bad taste of the opening, and her sense of humor put her at her ease.
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"i should not like to have you thank me," she said pleasantly.
"ah, but i came here expressly to do so!" returned mrs. barker. "this is the first opportunity i have had, but you may imagine how i have burned to see the brave girl to whom elsie owes, if not her life, undoubtedly the fact that she is not a cripple." mrs. barker prided herself on her eloquence; she addressed meetings of all sorts on every occasion, but this sentence had not turned out as well as she had expected it to. she began again: "for one thing, mr. barker and i have consulted each other, and thought long on what form our thanks should take. i have come here to beg a favor of you, my dear gretta—you will let me call you gretta?"
"oh, please," said gretta.
"yes. mrs. scollard, margery and happie, i beg that you will plead with your friend for me that i may have my way. i understand, gretta, that you have a little property somewhere in the country, but not enough to enable you to seize the advantages of a desirable education. i desire to give you six years at an excellent school, a boarding school. i desire you to be placed where you will have every advantage, not only of education of the mind, but of refined association, so that at the end of the six years, when you are twenty-one years old, you will be prepared to take your place among young women of your own age, their equal in cultivation, manners, accomplishments, as you will be their superior in beauty. mrs. scollard, please add your voi[112]ce to mine. gretta probably does not realize what this would do for her."
"gretta, dear, you do realize it, i know," said mrs. scollard softly. she laid her hand on gretta's. "you will not refuse, will you? it will change all your life."
gretta shook her head. "thank you, thank you very much, but i couldn't go, mrs. barker," she said.
"not because you want to stay with me, gretta!" cried happie, rising to throw her arms around gretta. "you would come to us in every vacation, and it wouldn't separate us, not really. you will take this chance, gretta?"
"no," said gretta quietly, "i can't."
"you will ruin your life, child!" protested mrs. barker.
again gretta shook her head. "i study at night, and i read a great deal with happie. and i learn how to be part of what you said—i think i couldn't have a better teacher of manners." she put her other hand over mrs. scollard's resting on her left one. "it's very good of you, but i think i can't accept your offer."
"i hope it isn't pride," said mrs. barker.
"i hope not," said gretta with a smile. "it would be very silly, sillier than it would be wrong, for why should i be proud? it's just that i can't, thank you."
"won't you leave the offer open a few days? let us talk to gretta. i think she ought to accept the chance to get a[113]ll that she always desired, mrs. barker," said mrs. scollard.
"certainly," said mrs. barker rising. "consider it for a week, two weeks, and let me know your decision. no, i really must not stay another moment. the carriage is waiting, and it is cold for the horses. gretta, whatever you decide i am very grateful to you. come and see elsie. margery and happie, your tea room makes it harder than ever to catch a glimpse of you! do come to see us! good-night, dear mrs. scollard; it is a pleasure to find you so much stronger than last winter. change your mind, gretta, i beg of you! good-night, dear people."
mrs. scollard summoned bob to attend their guests to their carriage, and as soon as the door was well closed behind them happie flew at gretta.
"i couldn't imagine why you were so sure right away that you wouldn't let her send you to school," she cried. "but the minute she said 'tea room' it flashed upon me! gretta, we can get on without you! do you think it would be right to refuse an education for that tea room?"
gretta looked as guilty as if she had been caught dynamiting a safe. "we all have as much as we can do," she said. "i think this winter i'd better help you. besides, i'm getting all the education i need—a better one than in school, in lots of ways. if you want to get rid of me, happie——" she paused, laughing out of her dark eyes, and happie promptly choked her. "you goose!" sh[114]e said.
bob came up two steps at a time. he had heard of the offer from mrs. barker. "good for you, gretta; we can't spare you!" he cried. "besides, you're educated now! no one can drive, make butter, do heaps of things like you. bother education!"
"yes, it is a bother," assented gretta.
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