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EVE TO THE RESCUE
by
ETHEL HUESTON
Author of
Prudence of the Parsonage,
Prudence Says So,
Leave It to Doris, Etc.
Illustrated by Dudley Gloyme Summers
[Illustration: "You get nicer every day of your life."]
Grosset & Dunlap
Publishers New York
Made in the United States of America
Copyright 1920
The Bobbs-Merrill Company
Printed in the United States of America
To Carol
Who came to us in the form of Duty,
but who has brought us only Pleasure
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I In Defiance of Duty 11
II The Cote in the Clouds 21
III Everybody's Duty 30
IV The Irish-American League 40
V Her Inheritance 59
VI A Wrong Adjustment 84
VII Painful Duty 98
VIII She Meets a Demonstrator 112
IX Admitting Defeat 124
X The Original Fixer 137
XI The Germ Of Duty 156
XII The Revolt Of The Seventh Step 175
XIII She Finds A Foreigner 195
XIV New Light On Loyalty 214
XV Service Of Joy 226
XVI Marie Encounters The Secret Service 248
XVII Spontaneous Combustion 266
XVIII Converts Of Love 282
XIX She Doubts Her Theory 301
XX She Proves Her Principle 312
XXI Her One Exception 332
EVE TO THE RESCUE
EVE TO THE RESCUE
CHAPTER I
IN DEFIANCE OF DUTY
"To-morrow being Saturday afternoon," began Eveley, deftly slipping a
dish of sweet pickles beyond the reach of the covetous fat fingers of
little niece Nathalie,--"to-morrow being Saturday afternoon--"
"Doesn't to-morrow start at sunrise as usual?" queried her brother-in-law
curiously.
"As every laborer knows," said Eveley firmly, "Saturday begins with the
afternoon off. And I am a laborer. Therefore, to-morrow being
Saturday-afternoon-off, and since I have trespassed on your hospitality
for a period of two months, it behooves me to find me a home and settle
down."
"Oh, Eveley," protested her sister in a soft troubled voice, "don't be
disagreeable. You talk as if we were strangers. Aren't we the only folks
you have? And aren't you my own and only baby sister? If you can't live
with us, where can you live?"
"As it says in the Bible," explained Eveley, truthfully if unscripturally,
"no two families are small enough for one house."
"But who calls you a family?" interrupted the brother-in-law.
"I do. And nice and sweet as you all are, and adorable as I am well aware
am I, all of you and all of me can not be confined to one house."
"But we have counted on it," persisted Winifred earnestly. "We have
looked forward to it. We have always said that you would come to us when
Aunt Eloise died,--and she did--and you must. We--we expect it."
"'England expects every man to do his duty,'" quoted Burton in a
sepulchral voice.
Then Eveley rose in her place, tall and formidable. "That is it,--duty.
Then let me announce right now, once and for all, Burton Raines and
Winifred, eternally and everlastingly, I do not believe in duty. No one
shall do his duty by me. I publicly protest against it. I won't have it.
I have had my sneaking suspicions of duty for a long time, and lately I
have been utterly convinced of the folly and the sin of it. Whenever any
one has anything hateful or disagreeable to do, he draws a long voice and
says it is his duty. It seems that every mean thing in the world is
somebody's duty. Duty has been the curse of civilization for lo, these
many years!" Then she sat down. "Please pass the jam."
"Oh, all right, all right," said Burton amiably, "have it your own way,
by all means. Henceforth and forever after, we positively decline to do
our duty by you. But what is our duty to you? Answer me that, and then I
guarantee not to do it."
"It is our duty to keep Eveley right here with us and take care of her,"
said Winifred, with as much firmness as her soft voice could master. "She
is ours, and we are hers, and it is our duty to stand between her and a
hard world."
"You can't. In the first place I am awfully stuck on the world, and want
to get real chummy with it. Any one who tries to stand between it and me,
shall be fired out bodily, head first."
"Oh, Eveley," came a sudden wail from Winifred, "you can't go off and
live by yourself. What will people think? They will say we could not get
along together."
"That is it,--just that and nothing more. It isn't duty that bothers
you--it is What-will-people-think? An exploded theory, nothing more."
Then she smiled at her sister winsomely. "You positively are the sweetest
thing, Winnie. And your Burton I absolutely love. And your babies are the
most irresistible angels that ever came to bless and--enliven--a sordid
world. But you are a family by yourselves. You are used to doing what you
want, and when you want, and how you want. I would be an awful nuisance.
When Burton would incline to a quiet evening, I should have a party. When
you and he would like to slip off to a movie, you would have to be polite
and invite me. Nobody could be crazier about nieces and nephews than I
am, but sometimes if I were tired from my work their chatter might make
me peevish. And you would punish them when I thought you shouldn't, and
wouldn't do it when I thought you should, and think of the arguments
there would be. And so we all agree, don't we, that it would be more fun
for me to move off by myself and then come to see you and be
company,--rather than stick around under your feet until you grow deadly
tired of me?"
"I do not agree," said Winifred.
"I do," said Burton.
"Then we are a majority, and it is all settled."
"But where in the world will you live, dear? You could not stand a
boarding-house."
"I could if I had to, but I don't have to. I have been favored with an
inspiration. I can't imagine how it ever happened, but perhaps it was a
special dispensation to save you from me. I am going to live in my own
house on Thorn Street. Of course it will be lonely there at first, since
Aunt Eloise is gone--but just listen to this. I shall rent the
down-stairs part to a small family and I shall live up-stairs. Part of
the furniture I am going to sell, use what I want to furnish my dove cote
in the clouds, and the rest that is too nice to sell but can't be used I
shall store in the east bedroom, which I won't use. That will leave me
three rooms and a bath--bedroom, sitting-room and dining-room. I can fix
up a corner of the dining-room into a kitchen with my electric percolator
and grills and things. Isn't it a glorious idea? And aren't you surprised
that I thought of anything so clever by myself?"
"Not half bad," said Burton approvingly,--for Burton had long since
learned that the pleasantest way of keeping friends with in-laws is by
perpetual approval.
"But you can never find a small family to take the down-stairs part of
the house," came pessimistically from Winifred.
"Oh, but I have found it, and they are in the house already. A bride and
groom. The cunningest things! She calls him Dody, and they hold hands.
And I sold part of the furniture yesterday, and had the rest moved
up-stairs. But there is one thing more."
"I thought so," said Burton grimly. "I remember the Saturday-afternoon-off.
I thought perhaps you had me in mind for your furniture-heaver. But since
that is done it is evident you have something far more deadly in store for
me. Let me know the worst, quickly."
"Well, you know, dearie," said Eveley in most seductively sweet tones,
"you know how the house is built. There is only one stairway, and it
rises directly from the west room down-stairs. Unfortunately, my bride
and groom wish to use that room for a bedroom. Now you can readily
perceive that a young and unattached female could not in conscience--not
even in my conscience--utilize a stairway emanating from the boudoir of a
bridal party. And there you are!"
"I am no carpenter," Burton shouted quickly, when Eveley's voice drifted
away into an apologetic murmur. "Get that idea out of your head right
away. I don't know a nail from a hammer."
"No, Burtie, of course you don't," she said soothingly. "But this will be
very simple. I thought of a rambling, rustic stairway outside the house,
in the back yard. You know the sun parlor was an afterthought, only one
story high with a flat roof. So the rustic stairway could go up to the
roof of the sun parlor, and I could make that up into a sort of roof
garden. Wouldn't it be picturesque and pretty?"
"But there is no door from your room to the roof of the sun parlor,"
objected Burton.
"No, but the window is very wide. I will just cover it with portières
and things, and I am quite active so I can get in and out very nicely.
And when I get around to it, and have the money, I may have a French
window put in."
"But, Eveley, I can't build a stairway. I don't know how to build
anything. I couldn't build a box."
"But you do not have to do this alone, Burtie. Just the foundation, that
is all I expect of you. You will have lots of assistance. Not experienced
help perhaps, but enthusiastic, and 'love goes in with every nail,'--that
sort of thing. I have sent invitations to all of my friends of the
masculine persuasion, and we have started a competition. Each admirer is
to build two steps according to his own design and plan, and the one who
builds most artistically is to receive, not my hand and heart, but a
lovely dinner cooked on my grill in my private dining-room. I have the
list here. I figured that twelve steps will be enough. Nolan Inglish,
two. Lieutenant Ames, two. Captain Hardin, two. Jimmy Weaver, two. Dick
Fairwether, two. Arnold Bender, two. Arnold is Kitty's beau, but she
guaranteed two steps for him. Won't it be lovely?"
"To-morrow being Saturday afternoon," said Burton bitterly.
"I ordered the rustic lumber last night, and it was delivered to-day."
"And you consider it my duty as the luckless husband of your
long-suffering sister, to lay the foundation for the wabbly, rattly
ramshackle stairs your pet assortment of moonstruck admirers will build
for you?"
"Not your duty, Burtie, certainly not your duty. But your pleasure and
your great joy. For without the stairway, I can not live there. And if I
do not live there, I must live here. And remember. When you want
vaudeville, I will incline to grand opera. When you would enjoy a movie,
I shall have a musicale here at home. When you are in the midst of a
novel, I shall insist on a three-handed game of bridge. When you are
ready to shave, I shall need the hot water. When your appetite calls for
corned beef and cabbage, my soul shall require lettuce sandwiches and
iced tea. Not your duty, dear, by any means. I do not believe in duty."
"Quite right, sweet sister," he said pleasantly. "It shall afford me
infinite pleasure, I assure you. And to-morrow being Saturday afternoon,
you shall have your stairway."