When the time came to hand in our collections for the library fund Peter
had the largest--three dollars. Felicity was a good second with two and
a half. This was simply because the hens had laid so well.
“If you’d had to pay father for all the extra handfuls of wheat you’ve
fed to those hens, Miss Felicity, you wouldn’t have so much,” said Dan
spitefully.
“I didn’t,” said Felicity indignantly. “Look how Aunt Olivia’s hens
laid, too, and she fed them herself just the same as usual.”
“Never mind,” said Cecily, “we have all got something to give. If you
were like poor Sara Ray, and hadn’t been able to collect anything, you
might feel bad.”
But Sara Ray HAD something to give. She came up the hill after tea, all
radiant. When Sara Ray smiled--and she did not waste her smiles--she was
rather pretty in a plaintive, apologetic way. A dimple or two came
into sight, and she had very nice teeth--small and white, like the
traditional row of pearls.
“Oh, just look,” she said. “Here are three dollars--and I’m going to
give it all to the library fund. I had a letter to-day from Uncle Arthur
in Winnipeg, and he sent me three dollars. He said I was to use it ANY
way I liked, so ma couldn’t refuse to let me give it to the fund. She
thinks it’s an awful waste, but she always goes by what Uncle Arthur
says. Oh, I’ve prayed so hard that some money might come some way, and
now it has. See what praying does!”
I was very much afraid that we did not rejoice quite as unselfishly
in Sara’s good fortune as we should have done. WE had earned our
contributions by the sweat of our brow, or by the scarcely less
disagreeable method of “begging.” And Sara’s had as good as descended
upon her out of the skies, as much like a miracle as anything you could
imagine.
“She prayed for it, you know,” said Felix, after Sara had gone home.
“That’s too easy a way of earning money,” grumbled Peter resentfully.
“If the rest of us had just set down and done nothing, only prayed, how
much do you s’pose we’d have? It don’t seem fair to me.”
“Oh, well, it’s different with Sara,” said Dan. “We COULD earn money and
she COULDN’T. You see? But come on down to the orchard. The Story Girl
had a letter from her father to-day and she’s going to read it to us.”
We went promptly. A letter from the Story Girl’s father was always an
event; and to hear her read it was almost as good as hearing her tell a
story.
Before coming to Carlisle, Uncle Blair Stanley had been a mere name
to us. Now he was a personality. His letters to the Story Girl, the
pictures and sketches he sent her, her adoring and frequent mention of
him, all combined to make him very real to us.
We FELT then, what we did not understand till later years, that our
grown-up relatives did not altogether admire or approve of Uncle Blair.
He belonged to a different world from theirs. They had never known him
very intimately or understood him. I realize now that Uncle Blair was a
bit of a Bohemian--a respectable sort of tramp. Had he been a poor man
he might have been a more successful artist. But he had a small fortune
of his own and, lacking the spur of necessity, or of disquieting
ambition, he remained little more than a clever amateur. Once in a while
he painted a picture which showed what he could do; but for the rest,
he was satisfied to wander over the world, light-hearted and content.
We knew that the Story Girl was thought to resemble him strongly in
appearance and temperament, but she had far more fire and intensity and
strength of will--her inheritance from King and Ward. She would never
be satisfied as a dabbler; whatever her future career should be, into it
she would throw all her powers of mind and heart and soul.
But Uncle Blair could do at least one thing surpassingly well. He could
write letters. Such letters! By contrast, Felix and I were secretly
ashamed of father’s epistles. Father could talk well but, as Felix said,
he couldn’t write worth a cent. The letters we had received from him
since his arrival in Rio de Janeiro were mere scrawls, telling us to be
good boys and not trouble Aunt Janet, incidentally adding that he was
well and lonesome. Felix and I were always glad to get his letters, but
we never read them aloud to an admiring circle in the orchard.
Uncle Blair was spending the summer in Switzerland; and the letter the
Story Girl read to us, among the fair, frail White Ladies of the Walk,
where the west wind came now with a sigh, and again with a rush, and
then brushed our faces as softly as the down of a thistle, was full of
the glamour of mountain-rimmed lakes, and purple chalets, and “snowy
summits old in story.” We climbed Mount Blanc, saw the Jungfrau soaring
into cloudland, and walked among the gloomy pillars of Bonnivard’s
prison. Finally, the Story Girl told us the tale of the Prisoner of
Chillon, in words that were Byron’s, but in a voice that was all her
own.
“It must be splendid to go to Europe,” sighed Cecily longingly.
“I am going some day,” said the Story Girl airily.
We looked at her with a slightly incredulous awe. To us, in those years,
Europe seemed almost as remote and unreachable as the moon. It was
hard to believe that one of US should ever go there. But Aunt Julia had
gone--and SHE had been brought up in Carlisle on this very farm. So it
was possible that the Story Girl might go too.
“What will you do there?” asked Peter practically.
“I shall learn how to tell stories to all the world,” said the Story
Girl dreamily.
It was a lovely, golden-brown evening; the orchard, and the farm-lands
beyond, were full of ruby lights and kissing shadows. Over in the east,
above the Awkward Man’s house, the Wedding Veil of the Proud Princess
floated across the sky, presently turning as rosy as if bedewed with her
heart’s blood. We sat there and talked until the first star lighted a
white taper over the beech hill.
Then I remembered that I had forgotten to take my dose of magic seed,
and I hastened to do it, although I was beginning to lose faith in it. I
had not grown a single bit, by the merciless testimony of the hall door.
I took the box of seed out of my trunk in the twilit room and swallowed
the decreed pinch. As I did so, Dan’s voice rang out behind me.
“Beverley King, what have you got there?”
I thrust the box hastily into my trunk and confronted Dan.
“None of your business,” I said defiantly.
“Yes, ‘tis.” Dan was too much in earnest to resent my blunt speech.
“Look here, Bev, is that magic seed? And did you get it from Billy
Robinson?”
Dan and I looked at each other, suspicion dawning in our eyes.
“What do you know about Billy Robinson and his magic seed?” I demanded.
“Just this. I bought a box from him for--for--something. He said he
wasn’t going to sell any of it to anybody else. Did he sell any to you?”
“Yes, he did,” I said in disgust--for I was beginning to understand that
Billy and his magic seed were arrant frauds.
“What for? YOUR mouth is a decent size,” said Dan.
“Mouth? It had nothing to do with my mouth! He said it would make me
grow tall. And it hasn’t--not an inch! I don’t see what you wanted it
for! You are tall enough.”
“I got it for my mouth,” said Dan with a shame-faced grin. “The girls in
school laugh at it so. Kate Marr says it’s like a gash in a pie. Billy
said that seed would shrink it for sure.”
Well, there it was! Billy had deceived us both. Nor were we the only
victims. We did not find the whole story out at once. Indeed, the summer
was almost over before, in one way or another, the full measure of that
shameless Billy Robinson’s iniquity was revealed to us. But I shall
anticipate the successive relations in this chapter. Every pupil of
Carlisle school, so it eventually appeared, had bought magic seed, under
solemn promise of secrecy. Felix had believed blissfully that it would
make him thin. Cecily’s hair was to become naturally curly, and Sara Ray
was not to be afraid of Peg Bowen any more. It was to make Felicity as
clever as the Story Girl and it was to make the Story Girl as good a
cook as Felicity. What Peter had bought magic seed for remained a secret
longer than any of the others. Finally--it was the night before what we
expected would be the Judgment Day--he confessed to me that he had taken
it to make Felicity fond of him. Skilfully indeed had that astute Billy
played on our respective weaknesses.
The keenest edge to our humiliation was given by the discovery that
the magic seed was nothing more or less than caraway, which grew in
abundance at Billy Robinson’s uncle’s in Markdale. Peg Bowen had had
nothing to do with it.
Well, we had all been badly hoaxed. But we did not trumpet our wrongs
abroad. We did not even call Billy to account. We thought that least
said was soonest mended in such a matter. We went very softly indeed,
lest the grown-ups, especially that terrible Uncle Roger, should hear of
it.
“We should have known better than to trust Billy Robinson,” said
Felicity, summing up the case one evening when all had been made known.
“After all, what could you expect from a pig but a grunt?”
We were not surprised to find that Billy Robinson’s contribution to the
library fund was the largest handed in by any of the scholars. Cecily
said she didn’t envy him his conscience. But I am afraid she measured
his conscience by her own. I doubt very much if Billy’s troubled him at
all.