"This is the Forest of Arden."
Rosalind, walking in the garden next morning, heard her name called from
the other side of the hedge.
"Is that you, Maurice?" she asked, bending to peep through the narrow
opening where they had first become acquainted.
"Yes; don't you want to go up to the Gilpin place?"
"I'd rather go there than anywhere," Rosalind assented eagerly, "I am so
interested in Aunt Patricia and the ring."
"The house is closed, you know, but the grounds are pretty. I'll meet you
at the gate whenever you are ready," Maurice answered.
He considered Rosalind his special friend by right of first acquaintance,
and had no thought of allowing Katherine or Belle to get the advantage of
him, and for this reason he had planned the expedition. He also wished to
talk over "As You Like It" without interruption, and was decidedly
provoked when she called to Katherine, who was shelling peas on the side
porch, "We are going to the Gilpin place; can't you come when you have
finished?"
Katherine, who had tried in vain to find out from Maurice where he was
going, was more than delighted at the invitation.
"It would have been nicer if we had stayed to help her," Rosalind
remarked, as they walked up the street.
"Girls' work," Maurice growled.
"Well, I am a girl. And why shouldn't boys shell peas? They eat them."
Maurice scorned such logic, but her eyes were so merry it was with an
effort he kept himself from smiling.
"Katherine is such a bother," he said.
"I like Katherine; she is so pleasant," Rosalind observed, with a side
glance at her companion.
"Perhaps you'd rather go with her and have me stay at home?" he suggested,
with much dignity.
"And shell peas?" Rosalind laughed.
What a provoking girl this was! And yet he liked her, and somehow at the
vision of himself shelling peas he couldn't help laughing, too, and thus
harmony was restored.
After climbing the hill, a good deal of exertion for Maurice with his
crutch, they paused to rest on the steps leading up from the gate of the
Gilpin place.
Rosalind, looking at the dignified mansion among the trees, felt the
atmosphere of mysterious interest that always surrounds a closed and
deserted house, particularly an old one upon which several generations
have left their impress. She thought of the young and lovely Patricia, and
the sailor lover who never came back.
"Do you know, I feel very sorry for Aunt Patricia, Maurice. To have some
one you love never come back--it must be very hard. I can understand a
little now since father and cousin Louis went away. Miss Betty said she
bore it bravely, too."
"It was a long time ago," said Maurice, feeling that it was a waste of
emotion to grieve over things that had happened so far back in the past.
"But there is the ring. It is not so very long ago since that was here.
Don't you wish we could go into the house and look for it? I believe it is
there somewhere;" Rosalind spoke with assurance.
"But they searched every nook and cranny," said Maurice.
"If it were in a story, there would be a secret drawer somewhere. I wonder
if Aunt Patricia isn't sorry it is lost." Rosalind sat in silence for a
few moments, looking down at the town. "I like Friendship," she said.
"There are a great many interesting things happening here, more than ever
happen at home."
The Gilpin house stood on an elevation of its own, from which the ground
sloped gently in all directions. Its late owner had cared little for
flowers and shrubs, but had taken pride in his trees, which still
preserved the dignity of their forest days. At the back of the house there
was a view of the little winding river, and halfway down the slope a once
flourishing vegetable garden had turned itself into a picturesque
wilderness of weeds. The charm of it all grew upon Rosalind as they walked
about.
"I should like to live here, Maurice. I like it better than our
garden--grandmamma's, I mean. Let's sit on the grass, where we can see the
river."
Not far from them was the rustic summer-house which Miss Betty had called
Patricia's arbor.
"Maurice," Rosalind exclaimed, with conviction in her tone, "this is the
Forest of Arden."
"You talk about it as if it were all true, instead of only a story," said
Maurice.
"But it is true--one kind of true. Cousin Louis explained it to me
once--ever so long ago, when I had a sore throat and couldn't go to the
Christmas tree, at the president's. I cried and was dreadfully cross, and
wouldn't look at my Christmas things; and after a while he asked me if I
should like to live in the Forest of Arden. I was so surprised I stopped
crying, and he told me that when we were brave and happy, we made a
pleasant place for ourselves, where lovely things could happen, and when
we were cross and miserable we made a desert for ourselves, where pleasant
things couldn't possibly come about, just as if you want flowers to grow,
you have to have good soil.
"Cousin Louis can tell things in a very interesting way, and by and by I
began to feel ashamed, and I made up my mind to try it; and when I told
father, he said he would try too, and we found it was really true,
Maurice. He and Cousin Louis and I--oh, we had such good times! We even
told the president about it, and Cousin Louis said he was going to start a
secret society of the Forest of Arden. Then he was ill, and everything
stopped.
"I know it isn't easy to stay in the Forest always, particularly when you
are dreadfully lonesome, but the magician says if you keep on trying you
will find the good in it after a while."
"How can there be good in bad things?" Maurice demanded.
"Did you read what was in my book? I know it by heart. 'If we choose, we
may walk always in the Forest, where the birds sing and the sunlight sifts
through the trees, where, although we sometimes grow footsore and hungry,
we know that the goal is sure.' That means it will all come right in the
end. Don't you know how, in the story, the people who hated each other all
came to be friends in the Forest?"
The sun travelling around the beech tree encroached upon their
resting-place, and Maurice proposed moving farther down the slope. "Tell
me about the secret society," he said, as they again settled themselves.
"It was a very nice plan," Rosalind answered, clasping her knees and
looking up into the tree top. "He told me about it one evening when he
wasn't well and had to lie on the sofa, while father did the proofs. Only
those could belong who made the best of things and knew the secret of the
Forest. We were sure the president would join because he had had a great
trouble and was very brave; and there was Mrs. Brown, who had lost all her
money, and kept house for us. Then, I didn't have anything much to be
brave about, but I have since, for I did so want to go with father and
Cousin Louis. Perhaps that doesn't seem much," she added apologetically,
"'but small things count,' Cousin Louis said."
"I should think it might," Maurice agreed.
"Aunt Patricia could have belonged," said Rosalind, her eyes still in the
tree top. "I wonder if she knew about the Forest?"
Maurice felt stirred by the picture her words called up of a great company
of people all bearing hard things bravely. "There is Morgan," he
suggested. "It must be hard to be deaf, yet he is always cheerful."
"Yes, indeed, he could belong. He knows the secret of the Forest. And
Maurice, you have a beautiful chance to be brave."
Maurice's face grew red, he pushed his crutch impatiently from him. "I
haven't been brave," he said.
"No, you haven't," Rosalind acknowledged frankly; "but then you did not
know about the Forest. Maurice, let's start a society, you and I, and
perhaps some of the others will join. The magician will, I know."
A shrill whistle was heard at this moment.
"It is Jack," said Maurice; and sure enough that individual presently
appeared and dropped down beside them, breathless from his run up the
hill.
"What are you two doing?" he puffed.
"Talking. How warm you are!" and Rosalind offered her broad-brimmed hat
for a fan. "Have you seen anything of Katharine?"
"She and Belle are on the way. Say, what were you talking about? It seemed
to be interesting." Jack rolled over on his back and blinked at the sky.