there?" added Prue.
"The equivalent of much coal. Patergrey wrote an article--by request,
mind you--for a magazine, and they have sent him a check for a hundred
dollars," cried Rob. "I guess there are people outside of Fayre with
brains enough to appreciate our father!"
"Oh, how beautiful!" cried Oswyth, while Prue caught her breath in
delight. Then, as Mrs. Grey's voice reached them in a happy laugh, the
three made a stampede to join her outside.
"Did you ever know anything so splendumphant?" cried Rob, once more
catching her mother around the waist in one of her mad onslaughts.
"I'm so glad, Mardy! You've looked so troubled," said Oswyth, kissing
her mother with a tenderness so maternal that it almost seemed as
though their relation was reversed.
Prue beamed on them all impartially. "I think it is quite awful that
money can make people so happy and unhappy," she remarked.
"That is an opinion held by all philosophers--all _other_ philosophers,
Prudence," observed her father.
"Let's make a tucked-in for dinner," said Rob. "It's the only way I can
express my joy."
A "tucked-in" was Rob's name for a fruit-pudding, into which one tucked
whatever fruit might chance to be in season at its making.
"Blueberry!" cried Prue, enthusiastically. "I'll go back to the store
and get them--they had beauties this morning when I went for the mail."
"What a lovely day!" said Wythie, but, though she gazed afar over
the tree-tops as she spoke, they knew that she did not refer to the
weather, nor the fleckless sky above them.
"I feel as though an inexpressible weight had been lifted from my
shoulders; I'm very happy, dear," said Mrs. Grey. But though she laid
her hand on her husband's arm as she spoke, and looked at him, only
Rob, who loved him so protectingly, understood that over and above the
relief of having the means to provide necessities for her family, her
mother rejoiced that her husband, for whose sake her sensitive pride
was always up in arms, had aroused himself to give them to her.
Dinner was scarcely over when Prue, looking out of the window, called
to her sisters: "Here comes Battalion B." This was Rob's final
christening of the three Rutherfords, who rarely appeared separately.
The friendship between them and the girls had progressed sufficiently
for the Greys not to mind being caught by "Battalion B" in their
uniforms, and Rob leaned out of the window now to hail them with wild
wavings of a dish-towel.
"How are you, Grey ladies?" cried Basil, as they entered. "We have come
to demand of you an afternoon in the orchard, beneath whose spreading
appletrees the village chestnut wishes to paint Prue's portrait."
"My portrait?" cried Prue, starting up in a rapture.
"Who, may I ask, is the village chestnut?" inquired Wythie.
"Bartlemy Rutherford, whose talents as an artist are great, though
unrecognized," said Bruce.
"Does Bartlemy paint?" cried Wythie, surprised.
"And powders and tints his eyebrows," whispered Bruce behind his hand,
in a stage aside. "But he doesn't want it known."
"Can you really paint, Bart? And will you do my portrait?" asked Prue,
much impressed, for she had caught a sufficient glimpse of an easel and
paint-box outside to convince her there was something behind Basil's
opening statement besides a jest.
"Oh, well, I can paint some--I always liked to. I'd like to try to do
you, if you wouldn't mind, down in the orchard, under the trees, you
know," stammered Bartlemy, getting embarrassed.
"He doesn't do so badly," added Basil. "You'd be surprised. We've got
canvases at home representing our tutor's brow, Bruce's mouth, my nose,
quite marvellously. Of course, there are other features in each of
these portraits, but those are the ones faithfully limned, so we always
politely allude to the portraits by their successful points. In private
we call Bartlemy Fra Bartolomeo. You observe its suitability; he is
already Bartlemy; he is a brother--twice a brother--so the _fra_ part
is o. k., and he is a painter. We think it kind and complimentary to
call him Fra Bartolomeo."
"Oh, let up on your nonsense, Bas," growled Bartlemy, even his
long-suffering patience beginning to give way. "Will you let me try a
portrait of you, or won't you, Prue?"
"I'd be perfectly delighted," cried Prue. "Only you must wait for me to
put on a white dress and let my hair down."
"And wash your face, little Goldilocks," added Rob. "However beautiful
blueberry juice may be as a temporary decoration, I shouldn't like it
perpetuated in a portrait."
Prue ran away, not deigning to notice this piece of advice, and came
back as quickly as was consistent with the attainment of perfect
beauty, looking really lovely in her snowy muslin gown, and her big
brown eyes alight under her masses of sunny hair.
"I'm going to take my darning," announced Wythie.
"Oh, dear," sighed Rob. "If only you good people didn't shame others
into being good, too! I suppose I ought to take some work--I'll shell
the peas!" This was a heroic resolve, for Aunt Azraella, in an
unwonted fit of generosity, had sent the Greys half a bushel of peas
from her abundance, to be canned for winter use, and the shelling them
was a formidable undertaking.
Rob pulled out the big basket of peas, and Basil and Bruce, each
seizing a handle, bore it forth. Rob followed with her big pan; Prue,
in the glory of her spotless raiment and the importance of sitting for
her portrait, could not be expected to carry more than her own weight,
so Rob had to hang the basket intended for pods across her shoulders,
and walked immediately behind Basil and Bruce, beating wildly on her
pan.
Prue, holding up her skirts daintily, walked beside Bartlemy, with
his artist's paraphernalia, as Oswyth, with her pretty sweet-grass
work-basket, brought up the rear, as calm and fair as always.
Down to the orchard they went, and to Bartlemy, as the one it
concerned, was left the selection of place. Finally he placed Prue
to his satisfaction--and greatly to her own--in the fork of a
picturesquely shaped old appletree, and fell back to regard her in
approved artist fashion, head on one side, and with one eye closed.
Then he set up his easel, and the rest disposed of themselves on the
grass, regardless of creatures that crawled.
Basil and Bruce--as perhaps she had expected--volunteered to help Rob
in her task, and sitting opposite each other, placed the empty basket
between their knees, while Rob sat beside them, where she could reach
supplies, with the bright pan in her lap, into which the peas were soon
hailing under the swift work of thirty fingers.
Oswyth began to darn, sitting a little apart, but almost forgetting her
work in the interest of watching Bartlemy sketch in the outline of the
appletree and Prue's slender figure, with swift, sure strokes. Whatever
Bartlemy might prove as a colorist, he unmistakably could draw.
"_When the little busy B's
Turn their minds to shelling peas,_"
began Rob in a cheerful sing-song, but got no further, for Bruce
interrupted her, carrying on her stanza,
"_'Neath the leadership of Rob,
What's a half-bushel job?_"
he sang.
"You are such nice boys," cried Rob, approvingly. "Just as big geese as
we are ourselves."
"Bigger, physically, but mentally we yield to you," said Basil, with a
bow.
"Do you expect to be a painter, Bart?" asked Wythie. The sketch he was
making was really full of talent.
"I'd like to be; they say I can't tell what I want till I finish
college, but I think I know," said Bartlemy. "I want to go off to
Europe and live in galleries for a few years, and then try my own hand."
"I mean to teach school," said pretty Prue, looking as picturesquely
unlike such a career as was possible. "I'm the only one that is getting
a regular school training; Wythie and Rob did lessons at home, but I'm
to be properly educated. So I shall teach. Unless I sing," she added,
as an after-thought.
"Bruce has been a doctor, according to his own verdict, ever since he
could speak," said Basil.
"And Basil doesn't care what he does, provided it puts a pen between
his fingers, and encloses him in four walls lined with books," added
Bruce.
"I think I shall be a motorman," said Rob, gravely. "I get so deadly
tired sometimes of hearing no clang or rattle! There is a monotony
about my youth that will drive me to trolleys, or a Ferris wheel when I
grow up. I'd like to see things hum."
Now a seventh member of the party had been adding himself to it, unseen
of the others, and in easy approaches. This was a grey goat belonging
to the Greys for some years, whose intimacy with the family was fully
established, and whose manners were of the pleasantest. But whether he
regarded Bartlemy's easel as a personal affront, or whether he resented
his daring to paint the pretty youngest girl, to whom the goat belonged
in a particular manner, no one was ever sufficiently in his confidence
to say, but just as Rob announced her desire to see things hum, they
hummed, for the grey goat, kicking up his heels, charged head down,
full at artist and easel.
Neither was prepared. Bartlemy was stooping, brush in teeth, to look
for a palette-knife, and two of the easel's three legs rested on tufts
of grass. As the goat charged Bartlemy went head over heels down a
slope below him; the canvas flew up and lighted full on Oswyth's smooth
head; the easel fell with a clatter, and paints danced broadcast
over the grass. Prue screamed, and so did Oswyth, not recognizing
the assailant in the first confusion. Basil and Bruce fell prone on
their backs, one in each direction, like Max and Maurice in the old
pictures, perfectly convulsed with laughter, while Rob, after the
pause of a startled instant, fell on her face and nearly went into
hysterics.
The goat, seeing that he was, after all, in the midst of friends, and
seeming to fear that he might have estranged them, looked around on the
company with a vacuous and conciliatory expression, while Bartlemy,
sitting erect, and pulling his collar up and his belt down, returned
the goat's gaze with a horrible scowl that sent his brothers and the
girls off into fresh spasms of laughter.
"What is he?" demanded Bartlemy, and added, shaking his fist at the
goat: "You old sign of the zodiac, I wasn't interfering with you, was
I?"
"That's our--our nice--gentle--oh, dear me!--our nice, gentle, old Ben
Bolt," gasped Rob, sitting up and wiping her eyes.
"Gentle!" ejaculated Bartlemy.
"He's our little pet," said Rob. "Come here, Ben, dear. Why did you
go for to do it? Bowling over a harmless boy who was painting of your
missus!"
Ben Bolt meekly obeyed, and took the chance to seize a mouthful of
peas, as he gazed with his light-barred eyes at the wreck he had made.
"Can you hold him, Rob? Is he likely to go off again?" asked Bartlemy.
"Never," said Rob, confidently. "I think he may not like art."
"Probably suspects camel-hair brushes of being made of goat-hair,"
suggested Basil, pulling Bruce into shape, who was quite weak from
laughing. "Where did you get the little angel, Rob?"
"Why, when Prue was only eight years old she found some boys abusing
a little grey kid--probably she felt for him because she was a little
Grey kid herself. At any rate, she purchased him for all her wealth--a
quarter--and brought him home. He's been a good goat, and used to
drag Prue in her wagon until she outgrew it. We named him Ben Bolt
because he bolted everything in sight, but though I used to sing to
him, inquiring if he didn't 'remember sweet Alice, Ben Bolt,' it never
affected him visibly."
"Painting is over for to-day," announced Bartlemy. "My easel has a
fractured limb, and my palette is broken."
"Oh, can't you go on?" cried Prue, so mournfully that they all laughed.
"Not to-day. We'll try again--sans Ben Bolt--soon," said Bartlemy.
"It's such a pity; my dress is so clean," sighed Prue.
"She finds it a world of stains and pains," observed Rob. "Never mind,
Prue; you aren't losing your hair yet."
"Come on, kid; help with these peas, since you can't paint," said Basil.
"Meaning me, or the goat?" asked Bartlemy, accepting the invitation.
"Give Ben Bolt the pods, and let's sing to him; then he'll be ashamed
of himself," said Rob, who dearly loved the sextettes the Greys and
Battalion B carolled.
"Or ashamed of us," suggested Bruce, but obediently lifted up his voice
in song.
The peas were done much too soon, with so many shelling. Long before
the young people were tired the last pod had yielded its five plump
fellows to the green-filled pan, under the pressure of Wythie's thumb.
Shouldering their burdens the six returned to the house.
"It has been a dear day," said Wythie, as she and Rob stood for a
moment on the steps before closing the little grey house for the night.
"Beautiful!" assented Rob, promptly. "In spite of our trials and
drawbacks we do have some blithe days in the grey house."
CHAPTER SIX
ITS HARD DAYS
"Julius has abdicated, and Augustus reigns in his stead," remarked
Prue, as she tore off the leaf of her calendar, which marked the first
day of the eighth month. Prue was fond of making what she considered
neatly erudite allusions.
Matters had not been going well in the little grey house. Mrs. Grey
found herself looking forward to the winter with dread, a dread she
tried to stifle, for it was contrary to this brave woman's temperament
and principles to look apprehensively toward the future.
Mr. Grey was working feverishly on his bricquette machine, more than
ever absorbed in it; it seemed to his anxious wife as if he were
putting into it his own vitality, that it was consuming something far
more precious than its inventor had ever dreamed would feed it. But,
since she could not prevent the harm--if harm were being done--Mrs.
Grey strove to drive the thought of it from her, and bear her immediate
burden, which was not too light.
It was a humid, sultry day, and many trying household tasks loomed
ahead threateningly on the morning when Prue made her classic allusion
as she tore off her calendar-leaf. Oswyth looked pale and tired. She
was an expert little needle-woman and had been sewing hard through
the heat to make old as good as new--which it never was and never
will be--for Prue's return to school. Prue was very particular as to
her raiment; poor child, it was hard to be the prettiest girl, and at
the same time the poorest one, in the school. Wythie sympathetically
thought and wrought to make her gowns as pretty and becoming as
possible to offset their many reappearances, and the hardship of
wearing the clothes one's elders had outgrown. Even Rob, though she
scoffed at Prue's little vanities, in her heart was sorry for the child
who alone of the three was forced out among her contemporaries, and
could not hide her deficiencies within the friendly walls of the little
grey house.
Mrs. Grey had been waiting an opportunity to cover the two big
arm-chairs in the parlor. There was nothing that this energetic woman
could not do with her hands, and Rob said: "Give Mardy a package of
dyes, a paper of tacks, and a hammer, and you may look for anything,
from a wedding-gown to a coach-and-four."
A certain faded poplin gown, in many pieces, and an old silk with
brocaded stripes had long haunted Mrs. Grey as a hopeful source of new
chair-covers. All the previous afternoon she had spent dipping the
poplin into a big iron pot bubbling over the fire and bringing it up
on the end of her "witch stick," as the girls called it, dripping and
dark, to be hung out to dry.
Here appeared Mrs. Grey's generalship, for though the poplin had
turned out a fine, uniform green, the pieces were much too narrow for
upholstery. So she had cut out the brocade stripes from the old silk;
the ancient sewing-machine, which made such a dreadful clatter and
was one of the Greys' grievances, yet which was still capable of good
service, rattled and hummed under Mrs. Grey's feet, as she stitched the
brocade bands at regular intervals on the dyed poplin, covering its
many joinings. And behold, the result was a fine upholsterer's tapestry
of wool, with a silken stripe, and not a piecing to be seen!
"There's glory for you!" cried Rob. "Anyone would believe that we paid
any amount a yard for that beautiful stuff."
"Put up your sewing, Wythie, and you and Rob stretch it and hold it in
place for me while I tack," said Mrs. Grey. "I flatter myself these
chairs are going to radiate splendor over the entire room."
"Come, then, Mardy; we'll help it radiate," said Rob. "Mercy, how
dreadful it is to-day--worse than hot--so sticky and horrid! Cat days
are nicer than dog days, aren't they, Kiku-san? Now look at that
catlet!" she added. Kiku-san had sprung from the table to the top of
the door, on the narrow space of which he sat, head on one side, in
his usual bird-like attitude, his white fur all streaks of dust. He
was quite unable to get down as he had got up, and Rob said with a
sigh: "Oh, dear; this means going to fetch a kitchen-chair to take him
down! I wonder how many times a day we do this? And a grasshopper's
a burden to-day, not to mention a heavy wooden chair. I never saw
such a mischievous cat! And only look at him! Regular stained-glass
expression; doesn't look as if he ever thought of anything but Watts's
hymns! He does this just to keep us trotting, the demure villain!" And
Rob shook a forefinger at Kiku, who only tipped his head a little more
to one side, and puckered his mouth a little tighter, knowing perfectly
that he was about to be rescued.
Rob came back dragging the chair disconsolately on its rear legs,
and placing it under the doorway, mounted it, seized Kiku-san by his
forepaws, and pulled him down, giving him an admonitory and chastising
pat as she set him free.
"You've got to take the chair back, Prue; I'm going to help Mardy, and
I can't do all the fetching and carrying," said Rob, as she descended.
"Indeed, I won't," said Prue, promptly. "You feel as much like it as I
do."
Rob tossed her head and went toward the parlor without another word,
and Prue departed upstairs, leaving the object of dissension where it
stood. Wythie patiently picked it up and bore it away, and followed
Rob to the parlor, where she and her mother were already fitting the
beautiful new covering on the chair.
"It's splendid, Mardy; what a genius you are!" cried Wythie, dropping
on her knees at her side of the chair. For a while they pulled and cut,
and Mrs. Grey tacked in silence, except for the necessary directions.
No one felt quite cheerful, nor had superfluous energy to spend in
speech.
Just as one chair was nearly finished a shadow fell across its arm,
and Mrs. Grey and the girls looked up to see Aunt Azraella, who had
entered unheard, watching them with her sternest look of disapproval.
"Ah, good-morning, Azraella," said Mrs. Grey, noting this and trying to
speak brightly enough to avert its expression. "We are trying to forget
the heat in the interest of hard labor."
"So I see. Aren't you forgetting something besides the heat, Mary?"
said this inflexible lady.
"Why, no; are we?" asked Mrs. Grey, surprised into a hasty mental
inventory of possible duties unfulfilled or engagements broken.
"Aren't you forgetting that there are more necessary things than
chair-covers?" demanded Aunt Azraella. "Aren't you forgetting the state
of your finances, and that you can't afford the least extravagance? How
much did you pay a yard for that material?"
Rob, foreseeing this question, had been engaged in a hasty mental
estimate of the original cost of the poplin and the silk. "Dollar and
a quarter for the woollen stuff--one seventy-five, surely, for the
brocade, when Mardy married, just--it cost precisely three dollars a
yard, Aunt Azraella," she said aloud, before her mother could reply.
Mrs. Winslow held up her hands in horror, and Mrs. Grey said,
reproachfully: "Rob, how can you?"
"I've no doubt the child speaks the truth," said Aunt Azraella, quickly.
"Thanks, aunt; I do try to," said Rob. "Mardy, you know it must have
cost at least three dollars--both of it."
"And you don't think that disgraceful, as you are situated?" began
Mrs. Winslow, but her sister-in-law interrupted her. "Azraella," she
cried--it was indicative of Aunt Azraella's character that on the
hottest day, and under the stress of physical weariness, no one ever
thought of abbreviating her name--"Azraella, aren't you used to Rob's
pranks yet? This is my old grey poplin, dyed, and run together with the
stripes of a handsome brocade I had when I was married. This scamp of a
girl is giving you the original cost of both materials; I am very glad
it looks well enough to deceive even your keen eyes."
But Aunt Azraella was not to be diverted from expressing the wrath
which had been gathering on her brow since Mrs. Grey had begun
explaining.
"Roberta is distinctly a trial," she said, severely. "An unmannerly,
impertinent girl. She may consider it funny to give me such a
misleading answer, but I consider it most disrespectful."
"I was only trying to be cheerful, aunt," said Rob, her face crimson,
and struggling not only to speak quietly, but to speak at all. "I
didn't intend to deceive you, but only to--well, to have a little fun
before you found out the truth."
"I know perfectly that you always object to my interest in your
affairs, but I consider your good more important than your likings.
I shall always tell all of you--from your indolent father and your
indulgent mother down--precisely what I think. It is my duty to be
perfectly candid and truthful," said Mrs. Winslow with the air of a
martyr.
"Perfect candor is rather dangerous, Azraella," said Mrs. Grey, and
Rob saw that she was having as much difficulty in speaking calmly as
her inflammable self. "One should wait until it is sought, and then
not indulge in its full expression, especially when one's opinions are
offensive--such as an allusion to the head of a house as indolent,
for instance. Mr. Grey has been working so hard of late that I am
anxious about him. And you see that you judged rashly in pronouncing us
extravagant. We were rather priding ourselves on our clever thrift. It
is such a very humid, trying day, that it is not favorable to too great
zeal for others."
When her gentle sister-in-law spoke with a certain calm deliberation,
and a slight lowering of lids and lifting of eyebrows, Mrs. Winslow was
apt to read it as a danger-signal and retreat. At heart she stood in
awe of her better-bred, better-born sister-in-law, and dared not press
her too far. Aunt Azraella had a habit of seeking the little grey house
as a lecture-field when affairs in her larger house went wrong.
"Well, Mary," she now began more mildly, "you know who it was that
asked if he were his brother's keeper. I think it is our duty to exert
ourselves for our neighbors, especially for our misguided kindred, and
never to shrink from the utterance of a truth, however unwelcome. But
you hold yourself entirely aloof from the affairs of others, and I
suppose we shall never see the question alike. I want to tell you about
Elvira--she is such a trial! And in this case you must advise me."
"Very well," said Mrs. Grey, with a sigh, seeing that Rob's tears of
nervous wrath were falling, as she pretended to busy herself with the
lining under the chair-seat, and resigning herself to listen for the
unnumbered time to a recital of the wrong-doings of faithful Elvira,
Mrs. Winslow's long-suffering "help," in the old-fashioned sense. It
would all end as it always did; Elvira only failed in the small ways
incident to humanity, and Aunt Azraella was wholly dependent upon her.
For a long time Mrs. Winslow recounted her woes, while Mrs. Grey and
Wythie and Rob pulled and tacked. How Elvira had insisted on placing
the glasses on the second shelf of the cupboard when Mrs. Winslow
had always kept them on the third; how she had resolutely clung
to a cheesecloth duster where her mistress preferred silk, and a
cloth-covered broom for cornices, where Mrs. Winslow, and her mother
before her, had used a feather-duster, etc., etc., through the whole
long list of pettiness which meant only that the August day was sultry
and Aunt Azraella out of sorts.