"Hannah," faltered Mrs. Wentworth, dropping into her chair, "they did
n't read my note right. They--they've actually sent us the whole
asylum!"
"Well, it looks like it--downstairs," returned Hannah grimly.
"Sure enough, they _are_ downstairs, and I must go to them," murmured
Mrs. Wentworth, rising irresolutely to her feet. "I--I 'll go down.
I'll have to send all but two home, of course," she finished, as she
left the room.
Downstairs she confronted five pairs of eyes shining out at her from
the gloom.
"Good-morning, children," she began, trying to steady her voice.
"There is--er--I--well--" She stopped helplessly, and a small girl
slid to the floor from her perch on the sofa and looked longingly
toward the hall.
"Please, ma'am, there's a kitty out there; may I get it?" she asked
timidly.
"Please, have you got a dog, too?" piped up a boy's voice.
"An' chickens an' little pigs? They said you had!" interposed a
brown-eyed girl from the corner.
"An' there's hammocks an' swings, maybe," broke in Tilly; "an' please,
ma'am, may n't we go outdoors and begin right away? Two weeks is an
awful short time, you know, for all we want to do," she finished
earnestly.
Four pairs of feet came down to the floor with a thump and eight small
boots danced a tattoo of impatience on the parlor carpet--the small
girl was already out in the hall and on her knees to the cat.
"Why, yes,--that is--you see, there was a mistake; I--" Mrs. Wentworth
stopped suddenly, for as soon as the "yes" had left her lips the
children had fled like sheep.
She stepped to the front door and looked out.
A boy was turning somersaults on the grass. Three girls had started a
game of tag. Watching all this with eager eyes was a boy of eight, one
foot tightly bound into an iron brace. It was on this child that Mrs.
Wentworth's eyes lingered the longest.
"Poor little fellow! Well, he shall be one of the two," she murmured,
as she hurried out to Hannah.
"When they going, ma'am?" began Hannah, with an assurance born of long
service.
"I--I haven't told them; I--well, I waited for Mr. Wentworth,"
confessed her mistress hastily. Then, with some dignity: "They can
just as well have to-day outdoors, anyway."
It was nearly noon when Mr. Wentworth drove into the yard, gave his
horse into the care of Bill, the man-of-all-work, and hurried into the
house.
"Mary, Mary--where are you?" he called sharply. Never before had James
Wentworth broken the serene calm of his home with a voice like that.
"Yes, dear, I 'm here--in the dining-room."
Mrs. Wentworth's cheeks were flushed, her hair was disordered, and her
neck-bow was untied; but she was smiling happily as she hovered over a
large table laden with good things and set for six.
"You can sit down with them, James," she exclaimed; "I'm going to help
Hannah serve them."
"Mary, what in the world does this mean? The yard is overrun with
screaming children! Have they sent us the whole asylum?" he demanded.
Mrs. Wentworth laughed hysterically.
"That's exactly what they have done, dear. They took my 'two' for a
'ten,' and--and they did the best they could to supply my wants!"
"Well, but--why don't you send them home? We can't--"
"Yes, yes; I know, dear," interrupted the woman hastily, the happy look
gone from her eyes. "After dinner I am--that is, you may send all but
two home. I thought I 'd let them play awhile."
"Humph!" ejaculated the man; "send them home?--I should think so!" he
muttered, as his wife went to call the children to dinner.
What a wonderful meal that was, and how the good things did vanish down
those five hungry throats!
The man at the head of the table looked on in dumb amazement, and he
was still speechless when, after dinner, five children set upon him and
dragged him out to see the bird's nest behind the barn.
"An' we found the pigs an' the chickens, Mister, jest as they said we
would," piped up Tommy eagerly, as they hurried along.
"An' a teeny little baby cow, too," panted the smaller girl, "an' I fed
him."
"Well, I guess you could n't 'a' fed him if I had n't held him with the
rope," crowed Bobby.
"Or if I had n't scared him with my stick!" cut in Tilly. "I guess you
ain't the only pebble on the beach, Bobby Mack!"
"Good Heavens!" groaned Mr. Wentworth, under his breath. "And have I
got to keep two of these little hoodlums for a whole fortnight?
Er--children," he said aloud, after the bird's nest had been duly
admired; "er--suppose we go and--er--read."
Into the house trooped the five chattering boys and girls in the wake
of an anxious, perplexed man. Some minutes later the children sat in a
stiff row along the wall, while the man, facing them, read aloud from a
ponderous calf-bound volume on "The Fundamental Causes of the Great
Rebellion."
For some time Mr. Wentworth read without pausing to look up, his
sonorous voice filling the room, and his mind wholly given to the
subject in hand; then he raised his eyes--and almost dropped the book
in his hand: Tommy, the cripple, sat alone.
"Why, where--what--" stammered Mr. Wentworth.
"They've gone out ter the barn, Mister," explained Tommy cheerfully,
pointing to the empty chairs.
"Oh!" murmured Mr. Wentworth faintly, as he placed the book on the
shelf. "I--er--I think we won't read any more."
"Come on, then; let's go to the barn," cried Tommy. And to the barn
they went.
There were no "Fundamental Causes of the Great Rebellion" in the barn,
but there were fundamental causes of lots of other things, and Mr.
Wentworth found that now his words were listened to with more
eagerness; and before he knew it, he was almost as excited as were the
children themselves.
They were really a very intelligent lot of youngsters, he told himself,
and the prospect of having two of them for guests did not look so
formidable after all.
From the barn they went to the garden, from the garden to the pond,
from the pond back to the yard; then they all sat down under the apple
trees while Mr. Wentworth built them a miniature boat; in days long
gone by James Wentworth had loved the sea, and boat-making had been one
of his boyhood joys.
At four o'clock Mrs. Wentworth called from the house:
"James, will you come here a minute, please?"
A slow red stole over the man's face as he rose to his feet. The red
was a deep crimson by the time he faced his wife.
"How are you going to send them home, dear?" she asked.
He shook his head.
"But it's four o'clock, and we ought to be thinking of it. Which two
are you going to keep?"
"I--I don't know," he acknowledged.
For some unapparent reason Mrs. Wentworth's spirits rose, but she
assumed an air of severity.
"Why, James!--have n't you told them?" she demanded.
"Mary, I couldn't; I've been trying to all the afternoon. Er--you tell
them--do!" he urged desperately. "I can't--playing with them as I
have!"
"Suppose we keep them all, then?" she hazarded.
"Mary!"
"Oh, I can manage it! I 've been talking with Hannah--I saw how things
were going with you "--his features relaxed into a shame-faced
smile--"and Hannah says her sister can come to help, and we 've got
beds enough with the cots in the attic."
He drew a deep breath.
"Then we won't have to tell them!" he exclaimed.
"No, we won't have to tell them," she laughed, as she turned back into
the house.
What a fortnight that was at "Meadowbrook!" The mornings--no longer
peaceful--were full of rollicking games; and the long, drowsy
afternoons became very much awake with gleeful shouts. The spotless
order fled before the bats and balls and books and dolls that Mr.
Wentworth brought home from the store; and the methodical routine of
the household was shattered to atoms by daily picnics and frequent
luncheons of bread and butter.
No longer were the days ordered with a precision that admitted of no
frivolous deviations, for who could tell in the morning how many bumped
heads, cut fingers, bruised noses and wounded hearts would need
sympathetic attention before night?
And so it went on until the evening before the two weeks were
completed; then, after the children were abed and asleep, the man and
his wife talked it over.
"Well, this ends to-morrow, I suppose. You must be tired, Mary; it's
been a hard time for you, dear," he began.
"Not a bit of it, James," she demurred. "Hannah and Betsey have done
all the work, and you 've been with the children so much I 've not felt
their care at all."
The man stirred uneasily.
"Well, I--I wanted to relieve you as much as possible," he exclaimed,
wondering if she knew how many boats he had built for the boys, and how
many jackknives he had broken in the process.
"Do you know?--I think I shall be actually lonely when they are gone,"
declared Mrs. Wentworth, without looking up.
The man threw a sharp glance at his wife.
"So shall I," he said.
"James, I've been wondering, could n't we--adopt one of them?" she
suggested, trying to make it appear as if the thought had but just
entered her head.
Again the man gave his wife a swift glance.
"Why--we--might--I suppose," he returned, hoping that his hesitation
would indicate that the idea was quite new to him--instead of having
been almost constantly in his thoughts for a week.
"We might take two--company for each other, you know!" She looked at
him out of the corner of her eye.
"Hm-m," he agreed pleasantly.
"The only trouble is the selecting, James."
"Yes, that is a drawback," murmured the man, with a vivid recollection
of a certain afternoon under the apple trees.
"Well, I'll tell you"--Mrs. Wentworth leaned forward in sudden
animation--"to-morrow you pick out the one you want and ask him--or
her--to go into the parlor for a few minutes at nine o'clock in the
morning, and I will do the same."
"Well, maybe," he began a little doubtfully, "but--"
"And if there are two, and you are n't real sure which you want, just
ask both of them to go, and we 'll settle it together, later," she
finished.
To this, with some measure of content, her husband agreed.
The next morning at ten minutes before nine Mrs. Wentworth began her
search. With no hesitation she accosted the little cripple.
"Tommy, dear, I want you to go into the parlor for a few minutes. Take
your book in there and read, and I 'll come very soon and tell you what
I want."
Tommy obeyed at once and Mrs. Wentworth sighed in relief. At that
moment Tilly came into the garden.
What a dear little woman those two weeks of happiness had caused Tilly
to become! How much she loved Tommy, and what care she took of him!
Really, it was a shame to separate them--they ought to be brought up
together--perhaps Mr. Wentworth would n't find any child that he
wanted; anyway, she believed she should send Tilly in, at a venture.
A moment later Tilly was following in Tommy's footsteps. On the piazza
steps sat Bobby--homely, unattractive Bobby, crying.
"Why, my dear!" remonstrated Mrs. Wentworth.
"Tommy's gone! I can't find him," sobbed the boy.
Mrs. Wentworth's back straightened.
Of course Bobby cried--no one was so good to him as Tommy was--no one
seemed to care for him but Tommy. Poor, homely Bobby! He had a hard
row to hoe. He--
But she could n't take Bobby! Of course not--she had Tommy and Tilly
already. Still--
Mrs. Wentworth stooped and whispered a magic word in Bobby's ear, and
the boy sprang to his feet and trotted through the hall to the parlor
door.
"I don't care," muttered Mrs. Wentworth recklessly. "I could n't bear
to leave him alone out here. I can settle it later."
Twice she had evaded her husband during the last fifteen minutes; now,
at nine o'clock, the appointed time, they both reached the parlor door.
Neither one could meet the other's eyes, and with averted faces they
entered the room together; then both gave a cry of amazement.
In the corner, stiff, uncomfortable, and with faces that expressed
puzzled anxiety, sat five silent children.
Mrs. Wentworth was the first to recover presence of mind.
"There, there, dears, it's all right," she began a little hysterically.
"You can call it a little game we were playing. You may all run
outdoors now."
As the last white apron fluttered through the door she dropped limply
into a chair.
"James, what in the world are we going to do?" she demanded.
"Give it up!" said the man, his hands in his pockets--James Wentworth's
vocabulary had grown twenty years younger in the last two weeks.
"But really, it's serious!"
"It certainly is."
"But what _shall_ we do?"
The man took his hands from his pockets and waved them in a manner that
would indicate entire irresponsibility.
"We might end it as we did two weeks ago and keep the whole lot of
them," she proposed merrily.
"Well--why don't you?" he asked calmly.
"James!"
His face grew red with a shame-faced laugh.
"Well--there are families with five children in them, and I guess we
could manage it," he asserted in self-defense.
She sat up and looked at him with amazement.
"Surely we have money enough--and I don't know how we could spend it
better," he continued rapidly; "and with plenty of help for you--there
's nothing to hinder turning ourselves into an orphan asylum if we want
to," he added triumphantly.
"Oh, James, could we--do you think?" she cried, her eyes shining with a
growing joy. "Tommy, and Tilly, and all? Oh, we will--we will!
And--and--we'll never have to choose any more, will we, James?" she
finished fervently.