It was the first of September, and the sunshine lay yellow on the
fields. Phebe McAlister and her chief friend and crony, Isabel St. John,
sat side by side on a rough board fence, not far from the McAlister
grounds, feasting upon turnips. The turnips were unripe and raw, and
nothing but an innate spirit of perversity could have induced the girls
to eat them. Moreover, each had an abundant supply of exactly similar
vegetables in her own home garden, yet they had wandered away, to prey
upon the turnip patch of Mr. Elnathan Rogers.
"Good, aren't they?" Phebe asked, as the corky, hard root cracked under
her jaws.
"Fine." Isabel rolled her morsel under her tongue; then, when Phebe's
attention was distracted, she furtively threw it down back of the fence.
"I believe I like 'em better this way than I do cooked." This addition
was strictly true, for Isabel never touched turnips at home.
"I want another." Phebe jumped down and helped herself to two more
turnips, carefully choosing the largest and best, and ruthlessly
sacrificing a half-dozen more in the process. "Here, Isabel, take your
pick."
Isabel held out her hand, hesitated, then, with a radiant smile of
generosity, ostentatiously helped herself to the smaller. But Phebe held
firmly to its bunch of green leaves.
"No, take the other, Isabel," she urged.
"I'd rather leave it for you."
"But I want you to have it."
"And I want you to take it."
"I've got ever so many more at home."
"So've I."
Reluctantly Phebe yielded her hold, and Isabel took the smaller one and
rubbed the earth away, before biting it.
"It's not fair for me to take it, Phebe," she observed; "when you were
the one to get it."
Phebe giggled.
"Just s'pose Mr. Rogers should catch us here, Isabel St. John! What
would you do?"
"I'd run," Isabel returned tersely.
"I wouldn't; I'd tell him."
Isabel stared at her friend in admiration.
"Tell him what?"
"Oh--things," Phebe answered, with sudden vagueness. "My papa and mamma
are coming home this afternoon."
"Your stepmother," Isabel corrected.
"Well, what's the difference?"
"Lots."
"What?"
"Oh, stepmothers are always mean to you and abuse you."
"How do you know? You haven't got any."
"No; but I knew a girl that had." Isabel took advantage of Phebe's
interest in the subject, to slip the half-eaten turnip into her pocket.
"What happened?" Phebe demanded.
"Oh, everything. The stepmother used to take tucks in her dresses, and
whip her, and send her to bed, and even when there was company. And her
own mother used to stand by the bed and say,--
'How is my baby and how is my fawn?
Once more will I come, and then vanish at dawn.'"
Phebe turned around sharply.
"What a fib! That's in a book of fairy stories, and you said you knew
the girl, Isabel St. John."
"So I did. Her name was Eugenia Martha Smith."
But Phebe refused to be convinced.
"I don't believe one word of it, Isabel; and you needn't feel so smart,
even if you do have a mother of your own. I used to have; and I know my
stepmother will be nicer than your mother."
"How do you know?"
"She's prettier and she's younger. She gave me lots and lots of peaches,
too, and your mother wouldn't let us have a single one, so there now."
"Do you know the reason why?" Isabel demanded, in hot indignation.
"No, I don't, and I don't believe she does," Phebe answered recklessly.
"She said, after you'd gone, that she'd have been willing to let you
have one, but you were so deceitful, you'd have taken a dozen, as soon
as her back was turned. Now what do you think?"
Even between the friends, quarrels had been known to occur before now,
and one seemed imminent. An unexpected diversion intervened.
"Little girls," a solemn voice sounded in their ears; "do you know you
are taking turnips that do not belong to you?"
It was Mr. Elnathan Rogers. Isabel quaked, but Phebe faced him boldly.
"Yes, sir."
"But it is a sin to steal--"
"A pin." Phebe unexpectedly capped his sentence for him. "These aren't
worth a pin, anyway, and I don't see the harm of hooking two or three."
"But they are not your own," Mr. Rogers reiterated. He was more
accustomed to the phraseology of the prayer-meeting than of the public
school.
"Ours aren't ripe yet," she answered, as she scrambled down from the
fence. "When they are, I'll bring some of them over, if you want them.
Yours aren't very good ones, either."
Isabel also descended from the fence. As she did so, her skirt clung for
a moment, and the turnip rolled out from her pocket. Mr. Rogers eyed her
sternly.
"Worse and worse," he said. "I would rather feel that you ate them here,
where temptation lurks, than that you carried them away to devour at
your ease. I shall surely have to speak to your parents, little girls.
Who are you?"
Isabel looked to Phebe for support; but Phebe was far down the road,
running to meet her brother, who had just come in sight, with Mulvaney,
the old Irish setter, at his heels.
"I--I'm Isabel St. John," she confessed.
"Not the minister's girl?"
She nodded.
"Well, I swan!" And Mr. Rogers picked up his hoe, and fell to pondering
upon the problem of infant depravity, while Isabel turned and scuttled
after her friend.
"What do you want, Hu?" Phebe was calling.
"Hope says it's time for you to come home now, and get dressed."
"Bother! I don't want to. Isabel and I are having fun."
Hubert took her hand and turned it palm upward.
"It must be a queer kind of fun, from the color of you," he observed.
"But come, Babe, Hope is waiting."
Isabel had joined them and fallen into step at their side.
"What a queer name Hope is!" she said critically, for she wished to
convince Phebe that she and all her family were under the ban of her
lasting displeasure.
"It is only short for Hopestill, and it isn't any queerer name than
Isabel."
"Hopestill! That's worse. Where did she ever get such a name?"
But Hubert interposed.
"It was mamma's name, Isabel; so we all like it. Let's not talk about it
any more."
Towards noon of that day, Theodora, who had taken refuge in her tree,
heard Hope's voice calling her. Reluctantly she scrambled down from her
perch and presented herself.
"There's so much to be done, Teddy," Hope said; "would you mind dusting
the parlor?"
Theodora hated dusting. Her idea of that solemn household rite was to
stand in the middle of the room and flap a feather duster in all
directions. To-day, however, she took the cloth which Hope offered,
without pausing to argue over the need for its use.
Once in the parlor, she moved slowly around the room, diligently wiping
the dust from exposed surfaces, without taking the trouble to move so
much as a vase. At the piano, she paused and looked up at her mother's
picture which hung there above it. It was a life-size crayon portrait,
copied from a photograph that had been taken only a few weeks before
Mrs. McAlister's death, and the sweet pictured face and the simple,
every-day gown were the face and gown which Theodora remembered so well.
The girl stood leaning on the piano, quite forgetful of the dusting, as
she stared up into the loving eyes above her, and, while she looked, two
great tears came into her eyes, and two more, and more yet. Then
Theodora suddenly bowed her head on her folded arms, and sobbed with the
intensity of such natures as hers.
"Oh, Mamma McAlister," she cried; "come back to us! We do want you, and
we don't want her. Your Teddy is so lonely. I won't have that woman here
in your place. I won't! I won't!"
She raised her head again to look at the smiling lips and the tender
eyes. Then abruptly she dragged forward a chair, climbed to the top of
the piano and took down the portrait which had hung there since the day
of its first entering the house.
It was late, that afternoon, when the carriage stopped before the house,
and Dr. McAlister, with his bride on his arm, came up the walk. The
children were waiting to greet them, Phebe perched on the fence, Hope
on the steps with Allyn clinging to her hand, and the twins in the
doorway, while old Susan stood in the hall, ready to welcome her new
mistress.
There was the little flurry of meeting, the swift buzz of talk. Then
Hope led the way into the great, airy parlor which she had not entered
before, that day.
On the threshold, she paused, aghast. Directly facing her stood a large
easel which usually held a fine engraving of the Dolorosa. To-day,
however, the Dolorosa was displaced. It stood on the floor by the piano,
and in its place was the portrait of Hope's own mother, looking up to
greet the woman who had come to take her place in the home. Across the
corner of the frame lay a pile of white bride roses, tied with a heavy
purple ribbon.
"Don't mind it, Jack," Mrs. McAlister said to her husband, as soon as
they were alone together. "I like the child's spirit. Leave it to me,
please. I think I can make friends with her before long."
Theodora was standing before the mirror, that night, brush in hand,
while the wavy masses of her hair fell about her like a heavy cape. Her
eyes looked dull, and the corners of her mouth drooped dejectedly. She
started suddenly when an unexpected knock came at her door.
"Come," she responded.
The door swung open, and Mrs. McAlister stood on the threshold. In her
trailing blue wrapper with its little lace ruffles at the throat and
wrists, she looked younger than she had done in her travelling gown, and
the pure, deep color was not one bit deeper and purer than the color of
the eyes above it.
"May I come in to say good-night?" she asked, pausing in the doorway,
for Theodora's face was slightly forbidding.
"Of course." The girl drew forward a low willow chair.
As she passed, Mrs. McAlister laid a caressing hand on the brown hair.
"What a mass of it you have!" she said, seating herself and looking up
at her stepdaughter who stood before her, not knowing how to meet this
unexpected invasion.
The remark seemed to call for no reply, and Theodora took up her brush
again.
"Did you have a pleasant journey?" she asked, after a pause.
"Very; but the home-coming was pleasantest of all. It was very sweet of
you all to be at the door to welcome me."
"That was Hope's doing," Theodora said bluntly. "She told us we ought to
be there when you came."
"It was good, whoever thought of it," Mrs. McAlister answered gently.
"Remember that it is years since I've known what it meant to come home."
Theodora tossed aside her hair and turned to face her.
"How do you mean?" she asked curiously.
"My father and mother died when I was in college," her stepmother
replied. "There were only two of us left, my little brother and I, and
we never had a home, a real one, after that. I taught, and he was sent
away to school."
"Where is he now?"
"In Montana, a civil engineer. I find it hard to realize that my little
brother Archie is twenty-two, and a grown man."
There was another pause. Then Mrs. McAlister suddenly drew a low
footstool to her side.
"Theodora, child," she said; "sit down here and let me talk to you. You
seem so far off, standing there. Remember, I'm a stranger to you all,
and I want somebody to cuddle me a little, this first night."
She had chanced to strike the right chord. Theodora never failed to
respond to an appeal to her sympathy and care. All enveloped in her
loosened hair, she dropped down at her stepmother's side.
"You aren't homesick, I hope."
"No; I couldn't be, with such a welcome home. But papa is down in the
office, and I needed somebody to talk to. I thought you'd understand,
dear. And then there were things I wanted to say to you."
"What?" Theodora asked suspiciously.
Mrs. McAlister rested her hand on the girl's shoulder.
"About the flowers, for one thing. I know so well how you felt,
Theodora, when you put them there."
"What do you mean?" Theodora faced her sharply.
"My own mother died before I was seventeen, a year before my father did,
and I used to wake up in the night and cry, because I was so afraid he
would marry again."
"But you married papa," Theodora said slowly.
"I know I did. Since then, Theodora, I have come to see the other side
of it all. But I remember the way I used to feel about it; and I know
that you think I am an interloper here. Hope doesn't mind it so much,
nor Hubert; it is hardest of all for you." She paused and stroked the
brown hair again.
Theodora sat silent, her eyes fixed on the floor.
"I sha'n't mean to come between you and your father, Theodora," Mrs.
McAlister went on; "and I shall never expect to take your own mother's
place. And yet, in time I hope you can care for me a little, too."
Suddenly the girl turned and laid her lithe young arm across her
stepmother's knee.
"I think I can--in time," she said. "It takes me a good while to get
used to new things, some new things, that is, and I didn't want somebody
to come here and drive my own mother farther off. She was different from
everybody else, somehow. But your mother died, and you'll understand
about it." Her tone was quiet and dispassionate, yet, underneath, it
rang true, and Mrs. McAlister was satisfied.
"Thank you, Teddy," she said gently. "Or would you rather I called you
Theodora?"
"Theodora, please," the girl answered, flushing a little. "Teddy was my
baby name; but I'm not a baby any longer. The others have called me
Teddy so long that I can't break them of the habit; but I don't like the
name."
"It suits you, though," Mrs. McAlister said, smiling as her eyes rested
on the intent young face beside her. "But I'll try to remember. And now
I wish you'd tell me a little about the younger ones, Phebe and Allyn.
Your father told me that Hope was the housekeeper, but that, in some
ways, you were the real mother of them all."
Theodora's face lighted, and she laughed.
"Did he truly say that? Hope has the real care of them, and she never
fights with them, as I do."
There was an amusing, off-hand directness in Theodora's tone which
pleased her stepmother. Already she felt more at home and on cordial
terms with the outspoken girl than with the gentle, courteous Hope; yet
she realized that her own course was by no means open before her, that
it would be long before Theodora would accept her sway in the home. It
would be necessary to proceed slowly, but firmly. Little Allyn and
fractious Phebe would be less difficult for her to manage than their
older sister. She lingered for half an hour longer, talking with
Theodora until she heard Dr. McAlister's step upon the stairs; and when
at last she left the room, Theodora's good-night sounded quite as
cordial as her own.