into the chair Mrs. Grey had vacated, and, leaning her head on her
hand, allowed the tears to gather and drop into her lap. The hope that
she must maintain in others it was hard for her to feel. Her cousin was
so frail, his life so far removed from the lives and interests of other
men that it was easy to imagine it ended. He was certain to continue
to work with the same feverish, excited eagerness until his patent was
completed, and the doctor had said----
"Here is the bread, Cousin Peace, and the coffee is nearly ready," said
Prue, entering, much more cheerful than she had gone out.
Miss Charlotte started up, with her own bright smile. "And I, for one,
am quite ready to drink it!" she cried.
Mrs. Grey came back, smiling also, Kiku on her shoulder. "He was shut
up, Peaceful, dear," she said, "and complaining bitterly of being
forgotten through dinner-time."
Rob brought in the steaming coffee-pot, followed by a procession of
three tall boys, each carrying something, ending with Wythie bearing
the cream.
Mr. Grey pushed open the door just wide enough to admit his head. "Do I
smell coffee?" he cried. "And would you have defrauded me?"
"You are to have hot milk, Sylvester," said Miss Charlotte.
"Oh, how do you feel, Patergrey?" cried Rob, springing to his side.
"I'll have nothing of the sort; I'll have a cup of this fragrant brew,"
declared Mr. Grey. "I feel all right, Rob, my son, only a trifle lame.
I am sure the doctor exaggerated the case, though I confess I wouldn't
have thought anything an exaggeration of it while it lasted. This bread
and butter tastes uncommonly good! Rob, my son, can I borrow you after
this repast is over? I need your help on a special bit of work for an
hour."
"Oh, come now, Mr. Grey!" protested Bruce Rutherford, involuntarily.
"'Vester, I implore of you, not to-night!" cried his wife, in such
distress that, as the girls added their voices to the chorus of
frightened protest, Mr. Grey looked from one to the other, and visibly
weakened. But Miss Charlotte clinched matters.
"You have no moral right to disregard Dr. Fairbairn, and the warning
you have had, Sylvester Grey," she cried. "Besides, you are to take me
home, and I am going to keep you to tea. I want to see you quite alone,
but Wythie and Rob shall come for you, and bring you home in triumph."
"Well, one man against so many of the earth's rulers," Mr. Grey began.
"Boys, won't you stand by me?"
"No, sir; not if you want to work to-day," said Basil; while Bruce
added: "I'm beginning to think they rule the earth because they're
better fit to do so. No, sir; we're on their side."
"You're beginning to cater to their love of flattery, you young
humbug," said Mr. Grey. "Well, if I must yield, I might as well yield
gracefully."
And later Miss Charlotte bore him away, leaving more hope behind her in
the little grey house than had seemed possible three hours earlier.
CHAPTER EIGHT
ITS MAKESHIFTS
As day followed day, with no return of the cause of their anxiety, the
Greys began to breathe more freely. If Mrs. Grey felt less confident
than the children, she hid her fears, and the girls rejoiced with the
buoyancy of youth in their rescue from the great sorrow threatening
them.
The autumnal equinox had passed, Prue had resumed school, and beautiful
brooding days of golden sunshine, with their lengthening evenings,
and the first touch of the cosey, shut-in feeling winter brings were
resting over Fayre. Rob's brow did not match the brooding peace of
nature. Over and over, with growing desperation, she said to herself:
"I must earn money, I _must_ earn money, but how?" Mr. Grey had thrown
caution to the four winds--if he could have been said to have any to
throw--and was working madly on his invention by day, and dreaming of
it by night. Rob was in constant requisition to help him; she shared
her father's excitement, and began to believe, with renewed faith, that
they were on the eve of entering the land flowing with milk and honey.
But the eve was dark and long, pointing, of course, proverbially to the
nearness of dawn, but hard to live through.
The disaster the Greys had feared had befallen them; there was a
temporary reduction in their income--so slender at best--owing to
something going wrong with a railroad, in the queer, and, to feminine
minds, mysterious ways investments have of behaving. It would be
righted again one day, but in the meantime the reduction took the
practical form of cutting down the simple family rations, leaving
nothing for anything beyond necessities, very literally construed,
and putting the Greys on a basis that really was, as Prue said,
discontentedly: "Poor folksy." And Wythie and Rob did need winter coats
so sadly! Their old ones were so shabby that Rob said she "was colder
with it on than without it, for its whitened seams and many worn spots
gave her chills."
"I give you fair warning, Wythie, I'm going to commit a felony," said
poor Rob, coming home from a walk and trying to laugh as she tossed
her hat on the old "nurse," as they called the shabby but comfortable
couch which had cuddled them all as babies. "I feel a felony coming on,
and it's as drawing as a felon."
"What form is it going to take, Rob?" asked Wythie.
"Stealing," said Prue, promptly. "I know I wanted to break in Roger's
window to-day and take the chocolate eclairs he had put there--they
looked perfect dreams, and were as fresh! Or else you want to fib," she
added, thoughtfully. "No, though; you're not tempted as I am. It is
simply awful when the girls ask you why you don't do this, or why you
don't get that. What am I going to tell them?"
"The truth, that you can't afford it," said Rob, stoutly. "You might
as well, for everybody in Fayre knows everybody else's affairs just
a little better than they do themselves, so everybody knows we're
poor--poor as pudding-stone rock. But there's one comfort; they all
know, too, we're not every-day, pasture pudding-stone, but real old
Plymouth Rockers, so mere money doesn't matter much--except to us.
I don't suppose--since Mardy isn't here--there's any use in our
pretending we don't mind the present pinching state of our finances."
"Our history lesson yesterday was on the way Alexander Hamilton
made banks and money out of nothing but his country's debts, almost
before it was a country; I wish I knew how he did it," observed Prue,
pensively.
"You haven't told us what form you felt your felony would take, Rob,"
said Oswyth. "Where does your moral felon hurt you?"
"I feel twinges all over, my dear Anglo-Saxon messenger," said Rob,
airily. "In my feet when I look at my shoes, in my fingers when I put
on my old gloves, or, worse yet, mittens instead of gloves, such as
most fair maidens wear, and in my stomach when I try to make it believe
an egg, some creamed potatoes, and a rice-pudding are porterhouse
steak. But it's reaching a climax on my back. I must have a winter
coat, and so must--a muster must--you, my patient Wythie. To-day when
I came past the rectory--St. Chad's rectory--the lady rectoress had
hung out her three daughters' three new winter coats, fur-trimmed, O my
sisters, and beautiful to behold! I am going to break and enter that
house in the dark of the moon, and steal those coats."
"I hope if you're caught your punishment will be banishment from
Fayre, or I don't see what good your felony will do you--you can never
wear the coats," laughed Wythie, and then she sighed. "It's hard,
Robsy, but bear up, my boy! You believe this is our last hard winter."
Rob shrugged her shoulders. "Of course, but it's also the only one
we're living through this year, and next year's dinners aren't
sustaining--or, at least, you can't help weak moments if you live on
them," she said. "Here comes our Aunt Azraella. She is stopping in the
back yard to examine those two underskirts you sewed that lace on,
Wythie. She is estimating its cost and disapproving of it at a high
rate of pressure. I wish she would come around the front way, even if
it is farther! What with the bleaching grass, the clothes-line, and the
pantry window, the back way is dangerous to a critic born."
"Rob, you're a villain!" said Wythie, trying to pull her lips straight.
"You've time for a little laugh, Oswyth; she's delaying now at the
blind I mended--neat job, Mrs. Winslow, ma'am, though I say it who
shouldn't," remarked Rob. "As to being a villain, it's lucky I am, for
unless a body's a saint like you--and you may have noticed I'm not--
Aunt Azraella might embitter one unless she were handled with a lightly
humorous touch. Eyes right! Shoulder arms! She comes, the Greek--a
freak?--she comes!"
Wythie and Prue looked flushed and shaken as their aunt entered, but
Rob met her with the solemnity of a Holbein portrait, or as nearly as
nature had allowed her rippling face to attain that standard.
"Good-morning, girls," said Mrs. Winslow. "I hardly have time to sit.
Where's your mother? It doesn't matter; don't call her. I came on an
errand."
"She's decided to waive the skirts; think how much nicer they'll look
with that lace on them when they're waved," whispered Rob to Wythie,
who choked as she gave her sister a remonstrant pinch.
"What I wanted was to borrow one of you girls to help me take down
the old parlor curtains and put up my new ones," said Aunt Azraella.
"Elvira has a bad knee, besides, she's busy, and I sent Aaron away on
an errand. Oswyth, will you come?"
"I will go if you like, but Rob is better at such work," began Wythie.
"I have to help Patergrey," "I would rather have you," said Rob and
her aunt, speaking together.
"Auntie and I are mutually agreeable to your going, Wythikins," said
Rob, smiling gaily into her aunt's face.
"I'll go," said Wythie, rising hastily; she was always nervously afraid
of what might happen when Rob and their aunt collided. "Do you want me
now?"
"Certainly; it gets dark too early to lose a minute," said Mrs.
Winslow. "Get your hat and jacket and come right along."
Oswyth obeyed. It was a pretty walk up the hill to Mrs. Winslow's from
the little grey house, but Oswyth did not enjoy it, for her aunt seized
the opportunity to question her as to the Greys' domestic affairs,
"because," she said, "Mary was so shut-mouthed," and to point out to
the young girl how straight they were headed for destruction. The girls
did not visit more frequently than duty demanded the hill-house which
would have been so pleasant to them if their uncle had not left it too
early for them to have known him. Oswyth entered it now with the chill
it invariably gave her.
Every chair sat prim and straight in its own place against the wall; it
made one shudder to imagine what would have been the consequences if
in the night they had taken to playing "Going to Jerusalem" with one
another.
The light was carefully excluded, and, warm and soft although the air
was out of doors, the house held a deadly chill in its atmosphere.
Books--proper compilations, selections, and poems--lay in austere
firmness, each on its own spot on the bleak plateau of the
marble-topped centre-table. A clock that had not made a new record of
time in sixty-one thousand three hundred and twenty hours, pointed
stoically to ten minutes to five from its position precisely in the
middle of the parlor mantelpiece, flanked on either hand by a grimly
resolute bronze warrior.
On the chair nearest the door lay the new curtains, dark blue, heavy
material, folded neatly and piled on one another. The old ones, which
had been pretty, green-corded silk, hung in their places at the
six windows; even in the dim light they had abandoned all hope of
concealing the fact that they were badly faded, and displayed their
yellow streaks with hopeless candor.
At the sight of them an inspiration came to Wythie which nearly took
her breath away. What was Aunt Azraella going to do with those old
curtains?
Aunt Azraella laid aside her lingering sun-hat with a manner--for
her--actually sprightly. "I'll get the steps, Oswyth, and you might
be shaking the new curtains out of their folds and putting the pins
in," she said. "You'll find new pins in that box on top of the pink
china vase. Turn the curtains down to the depth of this card across
the tops--all but two pairs. They have to be turned slanting, because
they go at the end windows, where the floor has settled. But there! You
can't do much while I'm getting the steps." And Aunt Azraella stepped
away with a certain crisp decision which was her way of hurrying--Aunt
Azraella never flustered.
Oswyth obediently shook out the curtains, and had laid the new
upholsterer's pins on the table, separating them into detached rows,
like so many brass grasshoppers, by the time her aunt returned with the
step-ladder hung gracefully on one arm, the other slightly extended for
balance. Before her walked Tobias, the tiger cat, so called because
of his fishing proclivities, and who, so far from being spoiled like
Kiku-san, was staid and serious, relegated to the kitchen and Elvira's
society, and only suffered in the parlor under special conditions and
surveillance, like the present.
"I'll take the old ones down, aunt; I can run up and down the steps
more easily than you," said Wythie, taking the step-ladder from her
aunt, and testing its iron brace as she set it before the first window.
Mrs. Winslow began to stick pins into the obdurate new material,
marking the amount to be turned down by keeping the card she had
notched against it with her left thumb, holding the while a second
brass grasshopper between her teeth, ready for use. Wythie unhooked
the old pins from the rings and let the faded curtains droop, eagerly
planning the while, and wondering if she could get her courage to the
begging-point. "I don't think," said gentle Wythie to herself, "I do
_not_ think that we can be forbidden to covet our neighbor's goods when
they are so very old and faded."
At last all the old curtains were down, and the new ones up in their
place. Wythie had patiently climbed up and down the step-ladder,
skilfully avoiding Tobias, who liked to sit on the second step from
the top; had altered pins, and supported the heavy material while Aunt
Azraella altered; her natural desire to please increased by her resolve
to be bold and dare when all was done. And when it was done she had
something of her reward, for Aunt Azraella actually patted her on the
shoulder, and said: "You have been very helpful, Oswyth. I was wise
to insist on having you; Roberta would never have been so patient and
thorough."
"I am glad if I have been useful," Wythie said, rather faintly.
"It seems a pity not to use those old curtains for something," said
Aunt Azraella, whose mind was on the order of Mrs. John Gilpin's. "But
they are too faded for any purpose, and too big to make it worth while
sending them to New York to be dyed."
"I wonder if you would mind--Aunt Azraella, might I have them?" said
Wythie, with desperate courage--it was nearly impossible for her to ask
for anything.
"You, Oswyth! What on earth could you do with them? You can't mean to
get your mother to dye them for curtains for your house? You don't need
curtains," said Mrs. Winslow.
"I don't want them for curtains, Aunt Azraella; I want them for winter
coats," said Wythie, more boldly, now that the first plunge was made.
"Rob and I are too shabby to go out when there's a moon--not to mention
sun. And Mardy could dye this material, and it would be warm and
pretty. If you don't need them, aunt, they would really do us a lot of
good--we would make the coats, you know."
Mrs. Winslow stared wonderingly, then she gleamed approval at Wythie,
though she felt called upon to conceal it. "There are thirty-six yards
here, fifty-four inches wide; do you think you need so much? And it
seems a pity to divide it," she said.
"Oh, no; I've no idea what it would take, but not that--still, they
would have to be lined, and Mardy could dye half another color, and
line with the same," stammered Wythie. "I didn't think you'd care, but
if you do I'm sorry I spoke--I did not mean to ask for anything you
wanted."
Having reduced Wythie to the properly humble frame of mind, Mrs.
Winslow relented. "I did not say I wanted them, Oswyth," she said.
"Thank goodness, your uncle, my husband, left me enough, besides all
I had from my father; he was a thrifty man, and a good business-man,
your Uncle Horace. I don't need old curtains, I hope. You may take a
pair home--if you can carry them--and ask your mother if they can be
used as you think, and how many she needs--you may have all you want
of them. I'm glad to see you practical and managing; you've got the
Winslow faculty, and aren't a Grey, as I'm afraid Roberta is. I'll get
you paper and twine. Go across the orchard, Oswyth; don't let folks see
you taking my curtains home. Can you carry them?"
"I'll carry them, aunt; never fear, and I'll not let a soul but
ourselves know where we got our splendid winter coats," cried Wythie,
gleefully. And in the exuberance of her pleasure she actually kissed
her aunt with an affection that really belonged to the new coats, but
which surprised and pleased Aunt Azraella as if it had been her own--as
indeed she thought it was.
She let Wythie out of the door in a high state of satisfaction in her
own generosity which had made the girl so happy, and watched her run
down the hill with a speed her heavy bundle could not at first retard.
But she had to go slower at the foot of the hill; only by repeatedly
sitting down on her treasure to rest, and by dragging and tugging it
with both hands between halts, did she succeed in reaching the door of
the little grey house.
Roberta saw her coming, and had the door open as Wythie laid her heavy
burden on the steps. "What in all the wide world have you there,
Wythie?" cried Rob.
"Our--winter--coats," panted Wythie, very warm and short-breathed.
"Honestly?" cried Rob, joyfully. "I thought Aunt Azraella had given you
her old curtains."
"So she has, and they are our winter coats," said Oswyth, preparing
to take her bundle into the house, but Rob forestalled her by seizing
the twine, and she carried the treasure, bumping against her knees, to
their mother.
Mrs. Grey laughed over Wythie's project, but pronounced it feasible.
"You will have to let me dye them black, girlies," she said. "I would
never risk all those faded stripes coming out one shade of a color. But
we'll make the lining red--defects won't show there--so they shall not
be sombre. I think I have some fur in the Golconda which will go around
the necks, and make them really sumptuous."
"The Golconda" was the chest in which Mrs. Grey stored her remnants of
better days, and which was to the girls a mine of richness, furnishing
them with their few luxuries of toilet.
The kettle and the witch-stick came forth, and the kettle boiled and
bubbled, and Mrs. Grey toiled and troubled to good purpose, for the
handsome material of the old curtains came out a beautiful glossy
black.
Mrs. Grey cut and basted, and Wythie stitched the new coats with
feverish impatience for the result, and Aunt Azraella came over to see
the trying on.
"Really, Mary," she said, moved almost to enthusiasm as their
mother revolved Wythie and Rob by their shoulders, displaying
a success exceeding her own hopes, while making chalk notes of
improvements--"really, Mary, you are wonderful! You might be a tailor.
It is marvellous, brought up as you were."
"My bringing up explains it, Azraella. Mother believed in teaching
her children to use their hands and wits. I'll tell you, Azraella;
it's that Plymouth strain you so venerate. The Pilgrim mothers wove
and spun, and my tailoring must be a case of pure heredity," said
Mrs. Grey, laughing with a girlish mischievousness that rarely found
expression. Wythie and Rob were just beginning to be old enough to
realize that their mother was young.
The coats were finished, and really were triumphs. Aunt Azraella was so
pleased with her curtains for turning out so creditably to her that she
actually produced from the treasure-house of her attic, which the girls
longed to ravage, handsome buttons to adorn the coats, and enough rich
velvet for hats for all three nieces. Wythie made jaunty little muffs
from the material of the coats, and behold, from being shabby, she and
Rob were transformed into an external splendor that enabled them to
look their sister maidens in the face with equable minds.
But aside from this windfall matters grew worse, rather than better,
in the little grey house. Everything that they could deny themselves
the Greys went without. Prue rebelled against her childish fare of rice
and molasses, and declared her eyes were growing almond-shaped from
over-indulgence in that celestial and nuptial grain.
Rob sang her a pleasing extemporaneous ditty about
_"Little Prue-sing, poor little thing!
Lived upon 'lasses and rice,
But she turned up her nose and said: 'Under the rose,
I'd rather have something more nice.'
But I said: 'O my Sweet, it will give you small feet,
And won't you consider the price?'"_
Prue looked less pleased with the ditty than she might have been, and
Wythie, "the olivebranch," as Rob called her, said, hastily: "We've a
Japanese kitten, so we oughtn't to mind being just a trifle Mongolian,
Prudy. Come here, Kiku-san." For Kiku-san was wearing his most serene
and sanctified expression, and that look usually preceded his breaking
something.
"Prudence, mavourneen, the Grey dawn is breaking," sang Rob, with
immense expression. "And you know it is always darkest before dawn.
Just wait--only wait a little while longer, my child, and Patergrey
will compress all our troubles with his coal-dust, and consume them
forever. Wait for the machine, Goldilocks."
But away down in her stanch and loyal heart Rob could not help feeling
that it was weary waiting.
CHAPTER NINE
ITS BURDEN
"Poor and content is rich and rich enough, but poor and genteel
is--pardon slang--most tough!" remarked Rob, looking over her shoulder
as she knelt before the oven, and making a wry face at Wythie,
unconscious of the streak of soot on her chin.
"If you could be but one, which would you rather be, poor or genteel,
Rob?" laughed her mother. But there was little laughter in the eyes
under a brow upon which increasing anxiety was daily making its record.
"I don't know, Mardy; I'm not sure I could tell them apart. I'm like
the ladies in Cranford, and have always known them together, but
vulgarity would have its consolations. We shall be vulgarly rich when
the bricquette machine is in the market," said Rob.
"And in the meantime?" hinted Wythie.
"Ah, in the meantime!" Rob took her bread from the oven and pulled
herself on her feet by the aid of the lid-lifter, conveniently
extending its handle from the back lid of the stove. Mother and
daughters looked sadly through the open door into the dining-room
and sighed. The sunshine struck the mahogany tea-table, with
the clover-leaf corners of its dropped leaf; on the old mahogany
sideboard, with its rounded ends and slender, straight legs and glass
knob-handles, and on the old pewter tankards and platters, and the blue
and white china standing upon it.
The Greys' troubles had reached a crisis; there was immediate and
imperative need of ready money, and Aunt Azraella had been over on the
preceding night "to talk common-sense" to her kindred-in-law.
"It's ridiculous," that Spartan woman had said, "for people situated
as you are to have so much money tied up in old furniture. Here are
these things--sideboard, table, chairs, pewter, old china; there are
those old bureaus, the high-boy, the tester-bed, the bookcases, the
work-tables--you have two--the old desk, not to mention the various
chairs and tables scattered through the house. Even a dealer would give
you a great deal for them, though private sale is better. But you
cling to them, and won't part with them either way!"
"They are not only the delight of our eyes, Azraella; they are
heirlooms from both sides. Some of them have been in the little grey
house for more than a hundred years. How could we part with them?" Mrs.
Grey gently replied.
"Necessity knows no law," Aunt Azraella answered, in one of those
convenient pellets of wisdom always ready compounded for infallible
persons to administer to the weak-minded. "I'll tell you what I will
do, Mary. I will take the things off your hands at a fair appraisal,
and give you cash down."