know all about it! Why do you say that to me?" she cried. "And Mardy
doesn't have a hard time--she'd never forgive me if I let you say that!
She loves you so much that it would have been cruel to have given her
all the world, without you."
"How can you understand that, Roberta?" asked her father, startled by
the girl's insight.
"Because anyone feels that way when they love someone," replied Rob.
"Wouldn't I rather be Roberta Grey, your daughter, than the richest
girl in the world with another father? Don't grieve, Patergrey. It's
all right for all the Greys, and we'll show all those people who talk
and don't know what they're talking about, we'll show them--you and I
and the bricquette machine--some day, won't we?"
"I hope so, Rob, I hope so," said her father. "But I can't help
wondering, little daughter. I sometimes feel as though I were losing my
hold. But, yes; we will prove ourselves right, Rob, my son," he added,
straightening himself, the red spot burning under his glowing eyes.
"And in the meantime you shall have the article this week, Rob. Tell
your mother not to worry; my article on fuel shall give us ours. Tell
her you woke me up to my duty."
"I'll tell her nothing about it, Patergrey," said Rob. "You shall hand
her the hundred dollars and surprise her when it comes. And don't say
I woke you up to your duty. It makes me sound perfectly horrid, and
feel worse than I sound. Now I must go help get dinner. Thank you,
Patergrey." And Rob kissed her father, and slipped away, glad to have
succeeded, yet with the vague pain at her heart which of late she often
carried with her from one of these pleasant mornings with the dear,
pathetic father.
CHAPTER FOUR
ITS RELATIVES
Although Fayre was a small Connecticut town not two hours away from
New York, the Greys followed the simple country practice of dining at
mid-day. It was much pleasanter, when the mistress of the house and its
daughters constituted also its service, for them to be able to draw a
long breath when the forenoon's labors were over, and feel that nothing
more onerous and damaging to gowns than preparations for tea lay before
them. The last dish had been put away, and the delicate towels hung
out in the sunshine to dry. Most human lots have their compensations,
and Mrs. Grey found the remembrance of her sweet, fine dish-cloths
consolatory to her amid the hardships of household drudgery.
Rob's brief depression in parting from her father that morning had
passed away. Rob's heart had not been fashioned to sink under weight;
she refused to believe in trouble until it forced itself upon her,
and then she still refused to salute it by its proper name. Now the
girls and their mother had dropped into chairs around the dining-room
table, and were enjoying that most restful stolen rest, to which
one has no right at that particular moment. No one in the family
was quite presentable if anyone should come, and it was already two
o'clock; they all felt that they had no right to linger there, still
they lingered. Yet what they called their "uniform" was pretty and
becoming. Each sister wore a plain, dark blue gingham, straight-hemmed
skirt and blouse waist, with a deep sailor collar, feather-stitched in
white, as were the cuffs. The collars opened low, and were tied with
a narrow white-linen knotted tie, and the fresh young faces and white
throats rose from the dark cotton, looking prettier than usual for
the plainness of their setting. The duplicates of these gowns hung,
fresh and newly ironed, upstairs; it was the Greys' working regalia,
"the badge of their labor union," Rob said. The warmth of the day,
and of getting and clearing away dinner, had made every one of Rob's
unruly locks stray out over neck and brow, and curl up at their ends.
She sat with her elbows on the table, her face in her hands, and Prue
sat in precisely the same position opposite her, both enjoying the
unconventional pose, as they did loitering in their working dresses
when the old dining-room clock had struck two. Oswyth leaned back in
her chair, her small, slippered feet thrust out before her, one arm
dangling over the chair-back. Mrs. Grey rocked cosily by the window
on the breeze side, and white Kiku-san, who was beginning to adjust
himself to his new home, though he still approached strange objects
with body elongated and with many nervous backward starts, sat now with
his head on one side, watching the shadows on the floor of the swaying
tendrils of the honeysuckle around the window.
"Oh, my heart, the Angel!" exclaimed Rob, suddenly, in panic-stricken
tones. They all looked up. Across the newly shorn grass approached a
figure, not very tall, but exceedingly awesome, and the Greys knew that
they were caught.
"Aunt Azraella!" murmured Wythie, uncrossing and drawing in her feet,
and bringing her arm to the front to join its mate.
With some incomprehensible notion of endowing her daughter with a
celestial name Aunt Azraella's mother, the late Mrs. Brown, had
christened her by a feminine form, of her own invention, of the name
of the dread angel of death. Prue had once caustically suggested that
it must have been because Mrs. Brown had foreseen "that she was going
to turn out so deadly." There were a great many hard points about the
Greys' life, but if any one of them was asked suddenly which was her
greatest trial she would probably have answered unhesitatingly: "Living
so near Aunt Azraella."
The girls speculated privately on what she could have been in her
youth to have made their mother's brother--the Uncle Horace whom they
did not remember--marry her. She was one of those persons born with a
sure conviction of their fitness and mission to set the world right.
She oversaw the Greys' expenditures, commented unfavorably on their
methods of economy, condemned severely almost all their pleasures
as extravagant, was wholly intolerant of what she called "Sylvester
Grey's shiftlessness," and was thoroughly convinced that she could
bring up three girls far more strictly, and far better than her
sister-in-law--and as to the first half of her proposition she was
doubtless correct. Yet she was not an ill-intentioned woman--Rob said
that was the worst of it, "because if she meant to be horrid you could
bid her to go to"--and in her peculiar way she really admired and was
fond of her late husband's sister.
"I wonder what we've done now," said Rob, out of her past experience,
and taking a rapid mental survey of events since her aunt had visited
them, in a vain attempt to discover a peg on which she could hang blame.
Mrs. Winslow appeared in the doorway before anyone could reply,
revealing herself portly, with a nose that dented in at the tip sharply
on each side above its widespread nostrils; the hair, eyes, and skin of
this estimable lady were of a uniform drabness.
"Good-afternoon," she said, entering. "Do you mean to say you aren't
dressed? It's quarter--no, seventeen minutes after two! I make it
a point to have myself and my house in perfect order every day at
half-past one--Elvira understands that I demand that of her."
"We can't get our girls to grasp the idea, aunt," said Rob, a remark
her mother hastily covered by saying: "It was so pleasant here we
loitered, yielding weakly to temptation, Azraella. Take this chair;
there's a refreshing little breeze at this window."
"What's that? Not a new cat! Now, Mary, how can you be so indulgent to
these girls? Don't you know it costs something to feed animals? It may
not be much, but you must often give them scraps you could use. It's
just in those small leakages that your management fails--they keep you
poor," said Aunt Azraella, sinking into the rocking-chair and removing
her severe garden-hat.
"We have a third of a cow, you know, aunt," said Rob, gravely, "and
none of us likes milk. We get more than three quarts a day, so it
leaves us enough for charity. And there are crumbs that fall from a
poor man's table as well as from a rich one's, Aunt Azraella. They're
smaller, and not such fat crumbs, but our loving and grateful friends
take them in the spirit in which they're given."
"They ought to go to the chickens," said Mrs. Winslow.
"Our arrangement with Mr. Flinders in regard to the chickens was that
he was to feed them, and we provide only the space for them--and
grasshoppers in summer," added Mrs. Grey, with a smile. "We have all
the eggs we need, but not nearly as many as he keeps for his own use. I
think this little white kitten won't impoverish us."
"You had a party yesterday, I noticed," said Aunt Azraella, dropping
the subject of pets and pouncing on the one which she had come over
especially to discuss, in what Rob felt was rather like a feline way of
pouncing on a mouse.
"Yes. Did you see what a pleasant one it was?" asked Mrs. Grey. "We had
a good time, and accomplished something besides."
"I saw three tall men here and a girl--I supposed it was the Silsby
girl," said Aunt Azraella. "And I saw you had tea on the lawn."
"'The three men' were the three Rutherford lads--aren't they tall
creatures?" laughed Mrs. Grey. "But they are only about six months
older, each, than our girls. Such nice, kindly, well-bred lads they
seem to be!"
"Where were you, Aunt Azraella? Why didn't you come in? We didn't see
you," said Rob, with apparent innocence.
"I was at home, too busy to gad," said her aunt. "I got a few late
currants, Mary, and I put them up--they made nine glasses of jelly. I
was short this year. You did not see me, Roberta, because I was not in
sight. I have no time to waste. But I saw you had a party, and I made
out the tea on your lawn with my field-glasses."
Rob had known this quite well before she was told, but she dearly
loved to extract the information for the benefit of the others each
time that their aunt came to reproach them for misdeeds which she had
discovered by a method of which she seemed never to be ashamed, but
which filled the Grey girls with wrath or amusement, according to their
mood at the moment.
Now Prue choked, and Oswyth's lips twitched, but Roberta looked Aunt
Azraella straight in the eyes, her own brilliant dark ones blankly
quiet.
"Oh!" she exclaimed, as if enlightened. "Jelly-glasses and
field-glasses, currants with an a, and currents with an e--currant
jelly and current news! Didn't we look pretty, aunt? We had out lots of
the old china and pewter."
This was pure malice on Rob's part, for Mrs. Winslow coveted the
Winslow heirlooms, to which as a childless widow, Winslow but by
marriage, she had no claim.
Mrs. Grey glanced at her second daughter. "If some of us don't make
ourselves presentable we shall be caught in our uniforms by someone
whom we mind seeing more than we do aunty, children," she said.
"Suppose we take turns in dressing, and Rob and Prue go first?"
Roberta arose. "Shall I wear my bridle, Mardy?" she inquired. "Not
very hard to see through, the Lady Grey, is she?" she added to her
younger sister when they were in the hall.
"I really don't see, Mary, I do _not_ see, how, situated as you are,
you can reconcile it with your conscience to give lawn-parties,"
said Aunt Azraella, severely. "These girls ought to understand that
they cannot expect the sort of youth they would have if their father
were other than he is. They ought to help you; not waste money in
entertaining."
"Azraella, Azraella," cried Mrs. Grey, stung to impatience by this
double thrust at her husband and her children. "You really should
acquire the habit of learning facts before you form opinions. No girls
were ever more cheerfully helpful and ready to do without the good
times other girls have than mine are. Roberta tried--dear child, she is
always trying something desperate--to cut the overgrown grass, since
we had no man to do it. She borrowed your lawn-mower for it, but the
grass was too long to use it. The Rutherford boys volunteered to the
rescue, and mowed all this great lawn. What you took for an extravagant
lawn-party was in reality a mowing-bee.
"I hope Roberta did not ruin my lawn-mower; I had no idea she wanted
it for that tough grass, or I would never have lent it--she ought to
have known better," said Aunt Azraella, shifting her attack.
"We didn't hurt it at all, aunt; we tried it, and when it wouldn't work
we gave up at once," said Oswyth, beginning to tremble. She never could
vent her wrath in lingual fireworks, as Rob did, and was sorely torn by
the necessity of bottling it up. Now she longed to say that they would
have been glad if their aunt had lent her burly Aaron, who was a great
friend to the Grey girls, and would have come willingly, to cut the
grass, but even Rob would hardly have ventured this.
"I need someone to help Elvira," said Mrs. Winslow, going off on a
tangent--she had "irruptions of the brain," Rob said. "I have been
thinking that I would take one of your girls, Mary. I would give her
twelve dollars a month, and she could come home every night, and it
would be time enough if she got up on the hill by half-past eight each
morning. It would give you a little extra income. Prue would answer, if
you can't spare Oswyth--I won't have Roberta."
Before Mrs. Grey could reply Oswyth sprang up, her face dark red to
her hair, and saying in a choking voice, "Excuse me, mother; I must
dress," ran upstairs without waiting for a dismissal.
"Goodness, Wythie, what is it now?" cried Rob, as her sister flung open
the chamber-door with a bang. "You look mad."
"Mad? Mad?" echoed gentle Wythie. "I'm furious! Don't you go back
there, either of you. She's more maddening than ever. She wants me or
Prue for a servant to help Elvira--she won't have Rob."
"Why, I don't believe she will," drawled Rob, with a flash of her
bright eyes. "Yet I would be good for her; a discipline, not unlike a
scourge."
Prue thrust her head through the door between her room and the girls'
chamber. She could not raise it because she was combing her fly-away
locks over her face, forward from the neck, having heard that this
treatment made the hair more fluffy. From the golden veil in which this
enveloped her she spoke: "Wants me for a servant to help Elvira? Did
you say that, Wythie? What did Mardy say?"
"I didn't wait to hear--I didn't dare. I felt as though I should have
apoplexy," said Wythie. "She had been saying things before that."
"She's always saying things--and seeing things," remarked Rob. "The
worst of the little grey house is that it stands where the hill-house
overlooks it."
Prue, inarticulate for a moment from the indignity offered the pretty
self which she did not underestimate, found her voice. "Well, let her
wait till she gets me," she said, in a tone so sarcastic as to make up
for the feebleness of the retort.
"We've made a 'sloka' since we came upstairs--Prue and I," said Rob.
"We are going to sing it when Aunt Azraella gets too unbearable; it's
better to sing things about her than to preserve your rage, as she does
her sharp currants."
"I'm afraid it isn't very nice," said Wythie, doubtfully.
"Yes, it is; it's a lovely 'sloka.' Of course, you can't be sure it's
nice till you've heard it. Just listen." And Rob sang softly:
"_There is a queer person in Fayre,
Who trails fury and wrath everywhere;
She's a dragon-like breath,
So they named her for death,
And when she comes calling: Beware!
We love our dear Aunt Azraella,
For she lectures us--every Grey feller!_
_And she spies with her glass
What does not come to pass,
While our feelings we scarcely dare tell her._"
Wythie could not help laughing, and felt better for it.
"Now, you and Prue, sit under the tree where you can warn Mardy if
anyone comes to see her. I'm going for a stroll," announced Rob, and
before Wythie could object she had disappeared without wasting time on
the empty ceremonial of donning a hat.
Straight through the old orchard she went, climbed the fence, and
took her course down the back road. She had a definite end in view.
Three-quarters of a mile away lived a second cousin of her father, a
blind woman, whom the Greys had from their childhood called "Cousin
Peace," though her name was Charlotte.
Often, when life and herself got too tumultuous for Rob, she ran down
for a breath of Cousin Peace's atmosphere. She saw the pale, calm face
she sought at the window as she drew near the house, and, opening the
gate, she went up and leaned on the sill without speaking.
Miss Charlotte Grey's thin right hand went out to touch her head. "Ah,
Roberta dear, how are you to-day?" she said, as she felt the soft
tendrils of curls which she had never seen.
"Pretty horrid, thank you, Cousin Peace," said Rob, penitently, "but
very well."
"Anything wrong?" asked "Cousin Peace."
"Nothing new, nothing much, and everything," said Rob, with Delphic
ambiguity. "We're not any richer, and Mardy's been worried, but we've
found some nice new boy friends. Still, Aunt Azraella's there this
afternoon, rather more trying than ordinarily--she even made Wythie
furiously mad. So you can see whether good or bad prevails."
"Your Aunt Azraella must not prevail--to anger you, dearie," said
Cousin Peace, gently. "She is one of those unfortunate souls that can't
see any difference in size between her mountains and her mole-hills.
She always reminds me of the old fable of the astronomer who had a fly
in his telescope, and thought a new world had rolled into space in
the field his glass swept. It is quite as bad as being totally blind
to lack perspective, I sometimes think, Robin. If you once grasp the
fact that only essentials are essential, dear, you will have mastered
the secret of good and happy living. And your Aunt Azraella is not
essential," she added, with a merry twist of her lips, as she turned
her closed eyes toward Rob, and laughed so blithely that it was evident
that she did not want to preach, and that all Rob's visits to her
distant cousin were not serious ones.
"She is certainly not essential to my happiness, dear, peaceful
cousin," said Rob. "You haven't heard the Iliad of How the Grass Was
Cut. Let me relate it." And, seating herself on the upper step, just
outside the window, Rob began to tell in her most dramatic manner the
story of their new acquaintances and how they had befriended the Greys.
As she listened Miss Charlotte's pale face flushed with laughing, and
she grew so much younger that it was perfectly clear that Rob not only
received, but gave in these visits to the blind woman.
When she arose to go Miss Grey held out both hands and kissed Rob,
who had to hold aside the syringa bushes growing unchecked before the
window, in order to reach her cousin.
"Dear Robin, come soon again; you do me as much good as your blithe
feathered namesake," said Cousin Peace, holding the strong, brown hands
a moment between her white ones.
"I'll come; you couldn't keep me away, Cousin Peace," said Rob. "You
do _me_ more good than an organ and a stained-glass window, and they
help me to feel angelic more than anything I know. Oh, why aren't all
relations like you?"
And Rob departed, soothed and heartened as she always was by blind
Cousin Peace, who saw so clearly. She went up the pretty back road as
the shadows were beginning to lengthen, and reached home to find Aunt
Azraella gone, and the kitchen of the little grey house filled with the
song of the kettle, and the homely, but comforting odor of toast, as
her mother and Wythie stepped briskly about getting tea, and Prue in
the dining-room sang as cheerily as the kettle while she was setting
the table.
CHAPTER FIVE
ITS BLITHE DAYS
Mr. Grey fulfilled his promise to Roberta. He wrote the article
which had been requested of him by the magazine, and read it to its
prime instigator before sending it off. She found it one of the most
remarkable productions of the human pen, nor was shaken, but rather
strengthened in her opinion by the fact that she understood very little
of what it was all about.
Then followed a ten days of waiting for the result, which seemed--to
one of the conspirators, at least--the longest ten days she had ever
passed. It was so hard not to drop a hint of the great expectations
to Wythie and Prue, still harder not to suggest to Mardy that the
anxious line between her eyes had no especial reason for being there,
since deliverance and the equivalent of the winter supply of coal
was at hand. At last Prue brought up the longed-for letter from her
early morning expedition to the post-office, and gave it, quite
unsuspectingly, to her father.
"Rob, Roberta, come here," called Mr. Grey, in a few moments, and,
feeling quite sure of the reason for her summons, Rob flew to him,
nearly upsetting little white Kiku-san on the way.
Her father looked boyishly delighted as she entered his quarters--Mr.
Grey would not allow the word "den" to be applied to his room. "See,
Rob, my son," he cried, triumphantly brandishing aloft the magic slip
of paper. "Your worthless father is not quite useless, is he? They
shall find out some day that Sylvester Grey is not the drone they think
him."
Rob had seized the check, and was gloating over it ecstatically.
"Take that to your mother, child, and tell her to cease worrying; that
there is the money she needed, and that when the machine is finished
she shall never again know what anxiety is," continued the dreamer,
magnificently. "And it will be done soon--in a few months, Rob--and
while it is getting placed I will turn my attention to this sort of
thing, and we shall be very comfortable while waiting to be rich. Why,
when my mind is free, Roberta, it is a low estimate to reckon that I
can make a hundred dollars a month by my pen."
"Of course you can, Patergrey," echoed inexperienced Rob, confidently.
"Will it take long to place the bricquette machine when it is done?"
"Oh, as to that, no one can tell--probably not, but there are delays
always liable to occur in the disposing of a patent. But this one is in
such demand--no, I think there will hardly be much delay. Not that it
matters seriously--the important thing is to get it off my mind; that
will leave me free, as I said. But run along and take this check to
your mother, Rob; she must be gladdened as soon as possible. Just wait
till I make it payable to her order," added Mr. Grey, seating himself
at the table.
"Indeed, I am not going to take it to her, Patergrey," declared Rob.
"You must give it to her yourself; what have I to do with it?"
"Oh, I can't," said Mr. Grey, flushing and hanging back like a
school-boy. "You have a great deal to do with it. Take it, and tell her
you got me to write the article, there's a good fellow!"
"Isn't it queer how almost all American little boys are ashamed to do
nice things? But this little boy must do as he's bid," laughed Rob,
feeling, as she often did, as though this tall, unpractical, lovable
dreamer were actually a little child. "I'll tell you what we'll do:
You go out and sit on the steps, Patergrey, and I'll go tell Mardy
there are several tons of coal and some other things outside, and
send her out to see. And she'll find you there. And when she comes,
you'll hand her the check, and after she gets her breath we'll have a
jubilation. Run along, little Patergrey; we don't get hundred-dollar
checks often enough to take this one in a commonplace, every-day
way--we must make a celebration of it."
Without giving her father time for further demur, Roberta bundled
him out of the door, putting her hands on his shoulders and pushing
him before her like a particularly active motor-engine. Laughing and
breathless, she got him into the ancient wooden arm-chair which stood
on the tiny stoop, and ran away in triumph to fetch her mother.
"Mardy, Mardy," she cried, rapturously, "coal and other vitals are
here--just come out! Go look, and 'drive that shadow from thy brow!'"
"Rob, my dear, are you quite crazy?" cried Mrs. Grey.
"Only go see! This time it is not the patient you must examine for
her sanity, but the front stoop. Drop your duster and obey, Lady
Grey!" cried Rob, seizing her mother around the waist and waltzing her
irresistibly toward the door.
"Rob, you're a scamp," gasped Mrs. Grey--all that she had breath to
say--as she kissed Rob's glowing cheek, and yielded.
"Wait a minute, Wythie; don't go out there, Prue. Let Mardy see the
luck first alone, and then we'll all go, and make a time of it," cried
Rob, getting between the other girls and the door.