Produced by Al Haines
Nancy
_of_
Paradise Cottage
_by_
SHIRLEY WATKINS
THE GOLDSMITH PUBLISHING COMPANY
CHICAGO
COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY
GEORGE W. JACOBS & COMPANY
_All rights reserved_
Printed in U. S. A.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I THE HEROINE GOES TO MARKET
II INSIDE THE COTTAGE
III A MODERN CINDERELLA
IV LADIES OF FASHION
V A RETICENT GENTLEMAN--AND MISS BANCROFT
VI MISS BANCROFT BEARDS THE OGRE
VII A MAN OF "PRINCIPLES"
VIII THE FIRST NIGHT AT SCHOOL
IX A QUARREL
X THE OGRE REAPPEARS
XI ALMA MAKES COMPLICATIONS
XII ALMA IN A SCRAPE
XIII NANCY HAS A GREAT ADVENTURE
XIV PARADISE COTTAGE
XV THE INCOMPREHENSIBLE MR. PRESCOTT
Nancy of Paradise Cottage
CHAPTER I
THE HEROINE GOES TO MARKET
"Let's see--bacon, eggs, bread, sugar, two cans of corn, and jam. Have
I gotten everything, Alma?" Nancy, checking off the items in her
marketing list, looked over toward her sister, who had wandered to the
door and stood gazing out into the street where a gentle September rain
was falling. Alma did not answer, seeming to have gone into a dream,
and the grocer waited patiently, his pencil poised over his pad.
"Alma, do wake up! Have I forgotten anything? I'm sure there was
something else," said Nancy, frowning, and studying her list, with her
under lip thrust forward. "I regularly go and forget something every
Saturday night, when there's no Hannah to concoct something out of
nothing for Sunday luncheon."
"You said you were going to bake a cake--a chocolate layer cake,"
suggested Alma, turning, and viewing the proceeding disinterestedly
with her hands in her pockets.
"That's it. I have to get flour, and some cooking chocolate, and
vanilla. Alma, you've got to help me carry these things. I'm not
Goliath."
"Mercy, Nancy, we don't have to take all that home with us, do we?
Can't you send them, Mr. Simpson?"
The grocer shrugged apologetically.
"It's Saturday, Miss Prescott, and the last delivery went out at
three--all my boys have gone home now or I'd try to accommodate you."
"I do hate to go about looking like an old market woman, with my arms
full of brown paper parcels," murmured Alma, _sotto voce_ to her sister.
"Goodness, I don't imagine there'll be a grand stand along the way,
with thousands watching us through opera glasses," laughed Nancy.
"Would you mind telling me whom you expect to meet who'd faint with
genteel horror because we take home our Sunday dinner? I don't intend
to starve to spare anybody's feelings."
"Last week I was dragging along a bag of potatoes--and--and I met Frank
Barrows. And the bag split while I was talking to him, and those
hateful potatoes went bumping around all over the pavement. I never
was so mortified in my life," said Alma, sulkily.
Nancy shot a keen glance at her sister's pretty face, and her eyes
twinkled. Alma's shortage of the American commodity called humor was a
source of continual quiet joy to Nancy, who was the only member of the
Prescott family with the full-sized endowment of that gift.
"Dear me, whatever did Frank do? Scream and cover his eyes from the
awful sight? Had he never seen a raw potato in all his sheltered young
life?"
Alma shrugged her shoulders--a slight gesture with which she and her
mother were wont to express their hopeless realization of Nancy's lack
of finer feelings.
"I don't suppose you would have minded it. But _I_ hate to look
ridiculous, particularly before anyone like Frank Barrows."
"But, Alma, you funny girl, don't you see that you look a thousand
times more ridiculous when you act as if a few potatoes bouncing about
were something serious? Don't tell me you stood there gazing off
haughtily into the blue distance while Frank gathered up your silly old
potatoes? Or did you disown them? Or did you play St. Elizabeth, and
expect a miracle to turn them into roses so that they would be less
offensive to Frank's aristocratic eyes? Come on now, help me shoulder
our provisions. We're members of the Swiss Family Robinson, going back
to our hut with our spoils. Pretend we're savages, and this is a
desert island, and not respectable Melbrook at all. Next time we go
marketing you can disguise yourself with a beard and blue goggles."
Alma laughed unwillingly. She was a dainty and singularly pretty
girl--a little bit foolish, and a good bit of a snob, but Nancy adored
her, though she enjoyed making good-natured digs at Alma's weak spots.
They took up their bundles, said good-night to Mr. Simpson, and went
out.
It was a walk of three miles from the village--or, as it preferred to
be called--the town of Melbrook to the Prescotts' house, which lay in
the country beyond, a modest little nest enough, where the two girls
had grown up almost isolated by their poverty from the gay life of the
younger Melbrookians. Alma chafed unhappily against this isolation,
chafed against every reminder of their poverty, and, like her mother,
once a beauty and a belle, craved the excitement of admiration, luxury
and fine things. She was ashamed of the little house, which was
shabby, it is true, ashamed of having to wear old clothes, and made
herself wretched by envying the richer girls of the neighborhood their
beautiful houses, their horses and their endless round of gay times.
As Nancy once told her mother, in affectionate reproof, they were
always trying to "play rich"--Mrs. Prescott and Alma. She had tried to
teach Alma her own secret of finding life pleasant; but Alma did not
love books, nor long solitary walks through the summer woods; and
Nancy's ambition of fitting herself to meet the world and make her own
living seemed to both Alma and her mother dreary and unfeminine.
Somewhere, in the back of her pretty head, Mrs. Prescott cherished the
hope and the belief that the two girls would find some way of coming
into what she called "their own"--not by Nancy's independent plan of
action, but through some easier, pleasanter course. She shuddered at
the idea of their making their own living, and opposed Nancy's wish to
go to college on the ground that no men liked blue-stocking women, and
that therefore Nancy would be an old maid.
"But, Mother darling, we can't just sit back and wait for some young
millionaire to come and carry us off?" Nancy would plead, shaking her
head. Time was flying, and Nancy was seventeen, and eager to begin her
own life. "Let me go--I can work my way through, and Alma can stay at
home with you."
"I need you to help me with Alma," was Mrs. Prescott's answer. Nancy
felt helpless. Her father, before her, had to his sorrow recognized
the hopelessness of driving any common-sense views into Mrs. Prescott's
pretty, silly little head. She had never realized that the decline of
the family's fortune had been, in no small measure, due to her. She
accounted for it on the grounds of old Mr. Thomas Prescott's inhuman
stubbornness and selfishness.
The two girls, leaving the village behind them, were walking briskly
through the rain, down the main road, bordered by the imposing country
estates of people who had gradually settled on the pretty countryside.
Nancy could remember when the hill, where now stood a staring white
stone mansion, surrounded by close-clipped lawns and trim gardens, had
been a wild, lovely swell of meadow, dotted with clusters of oaks and
elms; when in place of the smug little bungalow, with its artificial
pond and waterfall, and ornate stone fences, there had been a wooded
copse, where squirrels scuttled about among branches of trees, since
fallen in the path of a moneyed civilization. Other of the houses, of
haughty Mansard architecture, had stood there before she had been born,
and it had often seemed to her that the huge, solemn, beautiful old
place of Mr. Thomas Prescott had been there since the Creation. As
they passed it, they slackened their pace, and despite the weight of
bundles which grew heavier every minute, stopped and peered through the
bars of the great, wrought-iron gates.
A broad drive, meticulously raked and weeded, wound away from them
under magnificent arching trees, to the portals--Nancy said it would
have been impossible to consider Uncle Thomas's door anything but a
portal--which were just visible under the low-hanging branches. The
rest of the old stone house was screened from the rude gaze of prying
eyes, like the face of a faded dowager of the harem; save for the upper
half of a massive Norman tower, which thrust itself up out of the nest
of green leaves, like the neck of some inquisitive, prehistoric bird.
"I don't believe Uncle Thomas has passed through these gates in fifteen
years," said Nancy. "One could almost believe that he had really died
and had had himself buried on the grounds, like the eccentric old
recluse he is."
"Well, they would have had to have done something with all his money,"
replied Alma, pressing her forehead against the iron bars; "unless he
left everything to his butler, and had the will read in secret. It
would be just like him. Oh, Nancy, why are there such selfish old
misers in the world? Just think--if he'd just give us the least little
bit of all his money. Just enough to get a horse and carriage, and buy
some nice clothes, and--and get a pretty house. It wouldn't be
anything to him. Mamma says she is sure that he will relent some day."
Nancy shrugged her shoulders. To her mind, it was foolish of her
mother to put any hopes on the whims of an old eccentric. Mrs.
Prescott was one of those poor optimists who believe earnestly in the
miracles of chance, always forgetting that chance works its miracles as
a rule only when the way has been prepared for them by the plodding
labor of common sense.
"We mustn't count on that, Alma," she said soberly. "There is no use
in living on the possibility that Uncle Thomas will relent, and make us
rich. It isn't just for the pure love of money that he has been so
stingy toward us, I believe. He was never a miser toward Father, you
know. I--I think he would have given us everything in the world
if--if----" She hesitated, unwilling to state her private opinion to
Alma.
"If what?"
"Well, you see, I think the trouble was this. Come along, we mustn't
wait here, or you'll catch cold."
"What do you think the trouble was?" prompted Alma, padding after her
sister, and sloshing placidly through the puddles, in all the
nonchalant confidence of sound rubbers.
"Well, Alma, you mustn't misunderstand me. I'm afraid you will. You
know how I adore Mother. She's so pretty, and--and childlike, and
funny that nobody on earth could ever blame her----"
"Blame her? For what?" cried Alma, with sudden fire.
"Nothing. Only, Alma, we must realize that sometimes Mother makes
little mistakes, and I believe that she has had to pay more heavily for
them than she deserves. We've got to try to protect her against them,
by looking at life squarely, and wisely, Alma----"
"Are you going to preach a sermon? What were you going to say about
Uncle Thomas?"
"Just this. You know Uncle Thomas was a very clever man. He made
every bit of his money himself. Father told me long ago that when
Uncle Thomas began in life he did not have a cent in the world; he
started out as a plain mill-hand, and then he became a mechanic, and he
worked his way up from one rung to another, until through his own
talent and pluck he became very, very rich. Well, it's only natural
that a man like that should give money its full value--when he's toiled
for years at so many cents an hour, he knows just exactly how many
cents there are in a dollar. Perhaps he puts too great a value upon
it, but certainly we aren't judges of that. You know that Uncle Thomas
never married, and when Grandfather died, Uncle Thomas became Daddy's
guardian. I believe he loved Father better than anyone in the world.
Who could help it?" Nancy's voice trembled slightly, and she winked
back the tears which rose to her eyes at the memory of her father's
handsome merry face, which had grown so unaccountably saddened and worn
before his early death.
"He gave Father everything he wanted, when he was a boy--you know how
Daddy used to tell us how Uncle Thomas would tiptoe up to his room at
night and slip gold pieces into his stocking, so that he could find
them in the morning, and then when Daddy asked him about it, he would
shrug his shoulders, and his eyes would twinkle, and he'd say, 'It must
have been Brownies.'"
"I can't imagine how a man who used to be like that could ever have
grown so hard and bitter," said Alma.
"Well--then, you see, when Father grew up, Uncle wanted him to be
successful for himself. And he was terribly proud of Father when Daddy
first came back and told him that he had made five thousand dollars in
his first year at business. Then Father told him that he was going to
be married. Uncle didn't want him to--not until he had definitely
settled himself in life. And then, Father was very young, and Mother
only a girl of seventeen--think of it, just my age. But when Uncle saw
Mother, he adored her, of course." Nancy paused, and seemed to have
forgotten the rest of her story, but Alma prompted her curiously. She
had never heard this tale before, for Nancy had gleaned it bit by bit
from her father, when they used to take long walks together through the
country, and, putting two and two together, she had been able to get
rather close to the real truth of things.
"I know Uncle adored Mother," said Alma, kicking through a pile of wet
leaves. "He gave her those lovely Italian earrings, which I'm to have
when I'm eighteen. And all that wonderful Venetian lace, which the
first one of us to be married is going to have for her wedding gown."
"Yes. Well, then--then after Father and Mother were married things
didn't go so very well. Mother was just a girl--just my age, you know,
only she was pretty, like you, and, I suppose, a little extravagant.
At least, they weren't able to make ends meet very well, although Daddy
made a good income--and, anyhow, Uncle Thomas would have thought her
extravagant. He didn't see why it was necessary for her to send for
her clothes to Paris, and why Father was always worried about bills,
when he should have been able to live well within his income. Anyway,
Father wasn't able to save a cent, and one day Uncle Thomas came to him
and said that he had a very good opportunity for him to invest his
savings, so that they would draw a much better income than what they
were giving. The only trouble was that Father didn't have any savings.
Then Uncle became furious; he asked Father and Mother what kind of
future they thought they were laying up for us, and he scolded Mother
terribly for not helping Father. He quoted the Bible about women being
the helpmeet of their husbands, and about the parents eating sour
grapes and setting the children's teeth on edge. He said that they
were taking the path to ruin, and that Father could expect no help from
him unless he and Mother economized. But you see, poor Mother always
considered Paris dresses and jewellery and expensive dainties the
necessities and not just the luxuries of life. I don't suppose she
really understood how to economize at all. And anyway, things got
worse instead of better. Then, one year, Daddy lost an awful lot of
money trying to make some quickly so that he could get his debts
cleared up, and start fresh. Instead, he only got in deeper. And--and
then he fell ill. And you remember, Alma, when poor Father was dying,
Uncle came. And he cried and cried. But when Mother came into the
room, he got up and went out, and shut the door behind him. Then he
shut the gates of his house against us, too. I think he feels that
we--we girls must learn to look at life seriously, to work out our own
futures--so that poverty will teach us to be wiser than--than poor,
darling little Mother----" Nancy's voice had sunk, as if she were
talking to herself, so that Alma barely heard the last words. She was
thinking of Alma, wondering how she could teach her luxury-loving
little sister to see life practically, without taking away the joy of
it from her.
"We mustn't rely on Uncle Thomas, Alma," she said presently. "We
mustn't count on anything but what we can do for ourselves. Remember
that, dear. We've got to realize that our lives must run a different
course from those of richer girls--we can never do the things they
do--but surely they will be richer lives, and happier lives, if--if we
rely on no one, ask nothing from anyone, but what we earn"--her head
went up--"never struggle for, or want the things that lie beyond our
means, but make always the opportunities that lie within our grasp, or
_the ones that we can make for ourselves_, serve as stepping stones."
Alma glanced at her sister's sober, handsome face. There were times
when Nancy looked to her like some brave, gallant, sturdy lad, and
there were times when she agreed with Nancy in spite of herself, and
against her own inclinations.
"Here we are--home again. And if it isn't the snuggest, cosiest, most
cheerful burrow between here and Melbrook, why"--Nancy strode gaily up
the little brick walk with her long, boyish strides, and breaking into
a laugh, finished, "I'll beard the Prescott himself--tower, donjon-keep
and all!"