its other details, which was lucky, for Rob would never have dared
to offer course-tickets to her stories, with no rebates for absences.
But Mrs. Silsby said five dollars was so absurdly little for twenty
entertainments that nothing else was to be considered, and Rob yielded,
suggesting only that at the top of her little programmes were printed:
"Mrs. James Silsby presents Miss Roberta Grey," after the fashion of a
great New York manager, and that at the bottom be added: "Treasurer and
Press Agent, Mrs. J. H. Silsby."
There was some difficulty about Rob's title. Every lad and lassie in
her audience--all of whom she had known from their cradles--hailed
her "Hallo, Rob," when they met in the highway, but as a Scheherazade
the case was different, and her scant dignity of sixteen needed
re-enforcing.
Mrs. Dinsmore, the lawyer's wife, who was a great stickler for
propriety, insisted that her two hopefuls should say "Miss Roberta,"
and advised Rob to exact this title from the others. But Dorothy
Dinsmore herself settled the question by refusing to consider it.
"I wouldn't say Miss Roberta for anything, mamma," she declared. "I
might say Roberta, but I'd rather say Miss Rob, if I must do anything
silly, because you can just slide over that, and say ''S Rob'--and it
wouldn't make much difference."
"I would rather be called Rob than Srob," laughed Rob. "Oh, let them
go, Mrs. Dinsmore! It's going to be as nice a time as I can make it
for them, and I suspect it will be nicer if we don't try to make them
forget I'm just a bigger child than they are."
The result was that at Rob's first recital, though the children began
decorously in their places, dubious as to what was to befall them, they
soon discovered that it was not a prim teacher, but "just Rob Grey,"
the Rob Grey they had always known, who was telling them the most
delightful story they had ever heard. It was a story as full of magical
impossibilities as the fairy-tales that the girls loved, and as full of
the clash of arms, and the fury of battle, and the prowess of knights
as the boys could ask.
And behold, before she was half-way through, each of the twenty-five
of her audience had left his seat, and the children were hanging,
entranced and adoring, on the back, arms, and rounds of her chair,
huddling at her feet and leaning on her knees, and she knew that she
was succeeding beyond her fondest hopes.
Her first series was the Arthurian legends; Rob had prepared the first
story carefully and told it well, for she loved romance, chivalry,
and the poetry of history as every imaginative girl does, and the
inspiration of the fifty bright eyes, the eager lips, open as if to
drink in her words, made her lose herself as completely as when a few
years before, a little girl herself, she had told these stories to her
playmates.
Rob came home from her first recital--Mrs. Silsby had perfected her
kindness by lending her big parlor for the tale-telling--in the highest
feather.
"I'm a mediæval minstrel, a bard, a minne-singer," she declared. "And,
best of all, I'm a success. I may become a monologist, at ever so much
a night. Why, the children hung on my words--and they hung on my back
and arms and knees besides."
Prue, who had a strong sense of dignified propriety, was scandalized.
"You don't mean to say, Rob," she exclaimed, "that you let those
children swarm all over you? Why, they ought to have kept their seats
strictly."
"Well, they didn't; they left them laxly." Rob laughed outright at
Prue's horrified face.
"My dear spinster-sister Prudence, children can't half listen if
they don't wriggle--they must fidget about, or they get deaf in their
brains--not their ears. You used to swarm all over me when I told you
stories."
"I was your sister," said Prue, convincingly.
"Yes, you were; I even fancy sometimes you haven't outgrown being
my sister," said Rob. "Proper or not, the dear little crowd had a
perfectly scrumptious time, and they wanted me to promise to tell them
a story every day. You see, I'm already like a sort of serial, which
doesn't come out often enough. But the best of it is, I am actually
earning money and helping my family."
"You have always been the greatest help, Rob dear," said Mrs. Grey.
"You have been our tonic ever since you were old enough to feel
sympathy, and that was long ago."
"If I'm a tonic, Wythie must be cold cream, or something healing, and
Prue--what is Prudy? Violet extract to keep us dainty, I suspect," said
Rob.
If Rob was glad and thankful for her success, Frances was triumphantly
glorying in it. She never had been an especially clever child, while
Rob had been a brilliant little creature, the pride of her teachers,
who invariably brought her forward when the credit of the school was
to be maintained--this was in their early childhood, and during the
irregular periods when Rob had been at school. Now the humdrum girl had
devised the scheme which was to make clever Rob's fortune, as if the
moth had unexpectedly furnished the wick to the candle, and Frances was
as proud as she was delighted in its results.
The Rutherford boys hailed Rob a story-teller with irreverent
glee. Contributions from one or another of Battalion B poured in
daily--sometimes from all three at once. Maria Edgeworth's Moral
Tales--to supplement Rob's, if "her grey matter gave out," Basil's
accompanying note stated; a bunch of rattan-rods, slates, primers,
spectacles, and a cap for herself. Even a false front came from
Bruce--most frankly false, with a muslin parting, and yellow in color,
because, he explained, he "thought yellow would contrast prettily with
her dark eyes, and her cap would hide its not matching her own brown
locks." Bartlemy illuminated a set of mottoes to adorn the walls of
what the boys called "Rob's auditorium." "Little Children Must Never
Tell Stories," "Listen to My Tale of Woe," "As Tedious as a Twice-Told
Tale," "Young Robin Grey Came a-Courtin' We," "Truth is Stranger
(Here) Than Fiction," "Plain Tales for the Bills," three for a side
of the room. Rob hung these brilliant productions, and piled up all
her other tributes from Battalion B in a small, unused room under the
"lean-to" roof, where twice a week she retired to prepare her story for
the next recital.
In spite of the boys' ridicule, in spite of Aunt Azraella's croaking,
Rob's experiment was proving more successful each week. But the
pleasantest part of it all to Rob was when her father appealed to her
as a capitalist to aid in launching the invention.
"It is all done, Rob, practically finished," said Mr. Grey, laying a
trembling hand on the girl's shoulder one morning at the end of two
hours' close work together.
"Don't get excited, Patergrey; you know it is forbidden you," cried
Rob, beginning to quiver in sympathy. "Yes, it's done. Sit down; you
look pale--let me get you a tablet."
"Rob, you've been my right hand--my extra pair of hands--all the way
through," said her father, impatiently waving away the suggestion of a
tablet. "You've had so much faith, dear son Rob, and have understood so
clearly that you have helped me in that way almost more than in any
other. Now I am going to ask you to help me still further. Have you any
special use for the first hundred and twenty-five dollars from your
story-telling?"
"So many special uses that I've no special use--no, Patergrey," laughed
Rob. "There are so many things to be done with it that I can't see one
for the crowd of them. It is all for Mardy and Wythie, though. They
go without so slyly that I want every penny of this to buy things for
them."
"You generous Rob-of-mine!" exclaimed her father. "Then would it
disappoint you to lend me rather more than half of your wealth, to
launch the bricquette machine? It requires a very small capital, but it
needs that to start it on its journey into the world. I should rather
like to have my girl's money--the very first that she ever earned--do
this for the invention in which she has had such a share through its
entire growth."
"Like it, Patergrey! I'd love it!" cried Rob, her eyes dilating,
her cheeks flushing. "I'll get the money now--I've hidden it in my
twine-bag, real country fashion. How strange for my money to launch the
machine! Can it do it, really, Patergrey?"
"It really can. I will take but fifty dollars now, Rob, but I may need
more. There must be photographs and plates made, some printing done. I
would prefer your money to do this, if the idea pleases you."
For further answer Rob kissed her father as he ceased speaking, and ran
away to fetch the money, singing at the top of her voice.
That night were mailed to New York the first letters introducing to a
larger world than had yet heard of it the bricquette machine upon which
the hopes of the Greys hung, and into which all the energy of Sylvester
Grey's apparently unfruitful life had passed.
Wythie, who was always ready for bed long before Rob, sat in the
rocking-chair, a shawl over her white gown, watching, with eyes of
loving envy, Rob's frantic brushing of her unruly hair.
"I think I shall be wickedly jealous of you," she said at last. "Fancy
your launching the invention! I wish I were able to help as you do."
"You, Oswyth! You're not only an Anglo-Saxon saint, but a Connecticut
angel," cried Rob, somewhat inarticulately, as she held between
her teeth the elastic band with which she intended to fasten her
braid. "Without you we would all go--kersmash!--in one day. You do
everything."
"Do you remember how, when we reckon our resources, we put down two
columns, one certainties, the other possibilities? To think you are now
one of the possibilities!" persisted Wythie.
"And if I am, what then?" demanded Rob. "I may be a possibility, but
you are an extreme probability, Oswyth, my dear. You are at once a
column and a foundation. I'll never be half as useful as you are. Put
out the light, Oswyth Grey, and don't talk nonsense! Not but that
I'm thankful enough to be added to the column of possible sources of
income!"
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ITS HOPE
"Here's a bit of bread for you, Rob, my son," called Mr. Grey from his
doorway, waving an envelope alluringly toward Rob, who was on her knees
dusting the stairs.
"Bread? I'm not hungry, Patergrey; besides, it looks too white to be
well baked. What do you mean? Something nice, by the way you're beaming
at me." And Rob arose from her humble posture to go to her father and
investigate.
"It is bread--bread-on-the-waters, my girl," Mr. Grey retorted. "It is
the first interest on the money you lent me."
"The machine?" cried Rob, trying to seize the letter which her father
held tantalizingly above her head. "Oh, tell me quick if it is the
machine."
"It is the machine. But we mustn't expect too much," Mr. Grey hastily
added. "It is by no means sold, nor even appraised. This letter is
from a man in New York who is interested in such things, and he writes
that he is coming to Fayre the day after to-morrow to look into my
improvements in bricquette making. That's all, but it is a beginning,
and that's something in itself."
"It's a lot!" cried sanguine Rob. "What shall we have for dinner that
day? Have you told Mardy?"
"I have but just come in," said her father, laughing aloud. "What a
practical girl! And how truly her instinct guides her to the wisdom
of feeding well the man whom you wish to impress! Do the best you can
with the dinner, Robin, and maybe he won't discover defects in the
invention."
"There is none," retorted Rob, going off with a skip and a jump to
impart the news to her mother and Wythie, and consult with them on ways
and means.
The second day dawned clear and cold and brought with it, on the noon
train, the anxiously awaited arbitrator of the fate of the bricquette
machine.
Mr. Grey went to the station to meet him, and Wythie, Rob, and Prue
watched their approach to the little grey house from behind the muslin
curtains in their chamber.
There was an air of assurance and power about the stranger which filled
Wythie with fear of his judgment, and inspired Rob with confidence.
"Of course he will approve the machine if he knows what he's about,"
said Rob, "and he most certainly looks as though he knew."
Dinner was served at once, and Mr. Marston--by this name Mr. Grey
presented his guest to his wife and daughters--Mr. Marston was
enthusiastic in word and deed over his pleasure in what, he said, he
never found in the city--old-fashioned, home cooking, prepared by the
hands of ladies.
"You really have no business with a successful invention, Mr. Grey,"
said the guest--"you who are already so rich." And he smiled up into
Prue's face, who had risen to remove his plate, with a look that
conveyed his high sense of her value, and so embarrassed the child that
she dropped his knife and fork with a clatter.
"I don't like him," Rob confided to Wythie, when their father had borne
Mr. Marston away for a preliminary smoke--like his colonial ancestors
dealing with the Connecticut aborigines--leaving the girls with their
mother to their task of clearing away. "I don't like him--he's too
good to be true--but if he only will like the machine my likings and
dislikes don't matter."
Later Rob's father called her, and she went to help in displaying the
invention which she almost felt was as much hers as her father's.
Silently she moved the parts of the machine, co-operating with her
father as he talked, and silently the visitor watched the proceedings,
stroking his mustache and letting nothing escape his keen eyes, as
Rob saw, while she, in her turn, sharply, though furtively, eyed the
impassive face concealing its owner's verdict on the Greys' hopes.
At last the exposition of the machine was over, and Rob busied herself
with replacing the covers of the models, while her father and Mr.
Marston dropped into neighboring chairs for its discussion.
"It's unquestionably a good thing, Mr. Grey," the visitor said. "The
improvements are important, and, what is more, practical. I feel that
I have no right to say anything definite until I have seen my partner,
but I am perfectly within bounds in saying that I am thoroughly
convinced as to the value of your patent, and that we shall be ready
to make you an offer for it. At the same time I should be glad if you
will not show it to anyone else until that offer has been made and
discussed; I should like to retain an option on the machine."
"When I wrote you, Mr. Marston, and allowed you to come here to see the
invention, I considered it equivalent to a pledge not to allow anyone
else to see what might become your property, and would be valueless to
you if it were not protected," said Mr. Grey, quietly.
Rob waited to hear no more. She ran from the room, and caught Wythie
and Kiku in a comprehensive embrace, meeting them as they came, one in
the other's arms, across the hall.
"It's all right, it's all right, Oswyth, saint and martyr!" she cried,
whirling Wythie around, and sending Kiku leaping, panic-stricken by
her onslaught, to the top of the portière at the door. "He says he's
thoroughly convinced of the value of the patent, and he asks Patergrey
to keep it for him till he can consult with his partner as to the offer
they mean to make for it. Oh, I knew, I knew all along it was coming
right, but now it has come right, I'm ready to die of joy."
Wythie turned so white that Rob held her closer for another reason,
fearing she was going to faint. "We must find Mardy," was all Wythie
said, but her smile was so beatific that Rob was more than satisfied.
When Mr. Grey came back from the station, where he had been to speed
his guest, he found his household waiting him, half delirious with joy.
"It's all right now, isn't it, Patergrey?" cried Rob. "There's no
danger in our being as glad as we please, is there? It's sure and sure
that the invention will go, isn't it? That man settled it, didn't he?"
"No risk at all in rejoicing, Mary," said Mr. Grey, disregarding Rob,
and answering the girl's question to his wife, to whom he held out his
arms with smiling, quivering lips, and eyes bright at once with joy and
tears.
"Will it be much, Sylvester?" asked Mrs. Grey, still afraid to be glad.
"The offer? It will not be less than fifty thousand, if it is to be
accepted, Mary; that will put the Grey family into brighter colors,
and free the little grey house of its burden again," said Mr. Grey,
stroking his wife's abundant hair. "And, Rob," he added, as the girls
caught their breath with a gasp of ecstasy, "make a note of the name of
John Lester Baldwin, and his address on Broadway, in New York. I will
give it to you, and I want you to remind me to write him--he was a
college chum of mine, an honest man and a good lawyer. I mean to take
his advice as to the patent; I would trust it utterly."
Rob obediently made the memorandums on a pad, and her father
straightened himself, taking a long breath. "It is a curious sensation
to have succeeded, after so long," he said. "I hardly know how to
adjust myself to it."
Rob and Wythie exchanged glances, noting with the anxiety they always
felt for the dear father's safety, the dilation of his bright eyes and
his quickened breath.
"You have done enough, Patergrey," cried Rob. "You have made the
machine, and we'll do the adjusting, never fear! Mayn't I ask the boys
and Frances down to-night to rejoice with us, Mardy? And won't you get
your hat and coat and go with me to invite them, Patergrey? The fresh
air will bring us both to our senses--I feel as though my head were a
thistle in September."
"We should all be better for the boys and Frances, Rob," said her
mother, and at the same moment Mr. Grey said: "Yes, let's have the
young folks in, and play twirl the platter, and make molasses candy,
and have a real, children's party--I feel as though I wanted to get
down to a basis of pure jollity and be thoroughly a boy, now that for
the first time in years I feel the pressure of care lightened."
"Then get your hat--why, here come the boys now! Then I can't go,
Patergrey! Suppose you and Mardy take a walk instead, and we'll keep
Battalion B to supper, and I'll make them get it!" cried Rob.
"It would be pleasant, Mary, to celebrate by a stroll together; we
don't get one of our all-to-ourselves times very often," smiled Mr.
Grey. "Let's leave our girls to prepare our triumphal banquet, and
pretend we're young lovers again, with no tall girls to bother us."
Mrs. Grey laughed happily, and almost ran away to get ready for her
walk, and soon she was leaning on her husband's arm, and the three
girls were watching her as she laughed up into his face, as they
strolled in the direction of Miss Charlotte's to bring her the glad
tidings of the coming of prosperity to the little grey house.
"See how young and happy Mardy looks," sighed Wythie. "Only think,
if she will look like that all the time! Do you suppose, can it be,
girls--and boys--that this isn't too good to be true?"
"It's just barely good enough for you to be true," said Bruce. "We
don't believe that only bad things happen outside of books, do we, Rob?"
"No, sir; we believe only in good things--even when the bad ones
happen!" declared Rob. "Tommy Tucker sang for his supper, but if you
two big fellows want yours you've got to chop wood for kindling, or you
won't get it. And, Bart, would you mind very, very much if you were
asked most politely to go and fetch Frances?"
"Yes, I'd mind, because I like to be around when you're fussing, but
I'm willing to offer myself a sacrifice, if nobody else will," said
Bartlemy, looking around for his hat.
Poor Bartlemy could not hurry Frances sufficiently to get back to the
little grey house before supper was ready, and "the fun over," as he
grumblingly said. Rob patted his head like a big dog's. "Never mind,
Bartie dear," she said, soothingly, "you shall wash all the greasiest
pans!"
"What shall we do to celebrate?" asked Prue, when everything was
cleared away, and the dining-room table rolled to the wall to allow
games.
"I'll tell you," cried Mr. Grey, with an inspiration. "Let's rifle
the attic and invoke our ancestors to enjoy with us the prospect of
securing to future Greys this little house they loved. We know what
treasures there are in the chests and horse-hair trunks up there, don't
we, girls?"
"Oh, you never saw our old-fashioned clothing!" cried Wythie. "Why,
that's the very thing, papa! Get lamps, boys, and come up to the attic.
We'll dress up and have an old-folks' concert, just for ourselves. You
never saw such things as we have up there!"
Older and younger, all the Greys with their four guests, and lamps
enough to light the party, and with Kiku-san on behind, hoping for
mice, repaired to the attic.
A pleasant musty odor of dried herbs, camphor, and cedar-wood greeted
them, and queer shadows wavered big on the slanting walls to meet them.
"What a fine place!" exclaimed Basil. "Why don't we come here oftener?"
Mrs. Grey produced her keys and threw open chest after chest, and
Wythie, Rob, and Prue, with enthusiastic help from Frances, began
shaking out garments of more than a hundred years ago, as well as the
big skirts and poke-bonnets of the '50s.
Huge embroidered collars, long, handwrought lace veils, brocaded
silks, frail with age; gigantic leghorn bonnets; short, much-shirred
waists; high stocks for men, ruffled shirts, tight, short-waisted blue
coats; the high, pointed collars in which our grandfathers did penance
in the days of "Tippecanoe"; grotesque high and narrow beaver hats,
and broad ones of white silk, all these were brought forth into the
flickering light amid shouts of laughter and impatient clutches from
hands eager to try the effect of something that particularly struck an
individual fancy.
"No fair trying on up here," cried Prue, at last. "We must take
everything we want downstairs, and fit ourselves out there; we'll never
get down this way."
So everybody piled all that one pair of arms could carry into a great
heap, and each one lifted his burden and carefully picked the way down
the narrow, steep stairs, made particularly uncertain by the wavering
lamp-light.
"Now, ladies to the right; gentlemen to the left," ordered Wythie. "You
go into your room, papa, with the boys, and Mardy and Frances shall
come into ours with us, and we'll do our best. Don't I wish you had
wigs with queues!"
It took nearly three-quarters of an hour of excited hurrying and much
laughter from both sides of the hall before the impromptu fancy-dress
party was robed, and then at a signal nine queer figures appeared in
two lines, and stopped short, each convulsed at the sight of the other.
Mr. Grey, in knee-breeches and cocked hat of an earlier period,
was more imposing but not nearly as funny as Bruce in the costume
of the '30s, nor as Basil, portentously scowling between the sharp
collar-points like those which served as gateways to Daniel Webster's
eloquence.
Bartlemy, in a long-tailed, short-waisted black coat which must have
belonged to some clerical Grey, and with an incongruous white-silk
hat, was so funny that Prue forgot her frail, rose-besprinkled muslin,
and sat straight down on the floor to laugh at him. Wythie had found a
muslin frock, short and tucked-in skirt and waist, and slippers such as
Jane Austen's heroines tripped about in, and her pretty face was framed
in a big leghorn hat, tied down into a poke at back and front. She
looked as if she had stepped out of a Sir Joshua Reynolds portrait.
Rob had made herself into a lady of Revolutionary days, hair high, and
gown of brocade low in neck, and draped with an immense embroidered
fichu. Prue's muslin did not much antedate the civil war, but Frances
had arrayed herself in a gown which Dolly Madison would have recognized
as the latest fashion had she come to life to see it.
Mrs. Grey seemed to have taken what no one else wanted, but nothing
else that she had on mattered much while she wore the great pink gauze
turban which crowned her hair.
"It's a real pity no one can see us," declared Frances, when they
were mustered in the dining-room, and had dropped, breathless with
laughter, into the old chairs which should have welcomed gladly the
figures of their youth returning to them.
"We'll get up a real affair, give an old folks' concert or something,
in costume--we'd have a great one," cried Bruce. "Will you, say toward
spring?"
"Very likely," said Rob, "but what are we going to do now, this minute?"
"You are going to dance," said Mrs. Grey. "I'm going to play for you,
and if our piano is old and thin, then you must remember that it is in
old-time costume also, and not mind."
"We can have a fine square-dance," cried Prue. "Just four
couples--papa, will you dance?"