"I was in a horrid temper, but I didn't know how horrid until you told me
the story and I read in the book what your cousin wrote about bearing
hard things bravely. I suppose if it had not been for you, I should have
gone on being a beast."
"I was feeling pretty cross myself that day. I didn't know then what a
pleasant place Friendship is. I think I have found a great deal of joy by
the way, as Cousin Louis said," Rosalind continued meditatively.
"And I thought my summer was spoiled," Maurice added.
"It just shows you can never tell," Rosalind concluded wisely.
"Are you sure you won't forget us when you go away?" Maurice wanted to say
"me," instead of "us," but a sudden shyness prevented.
"Why, Maurice, I couldn't! Especially you; for you were my first friend."
The gray eyes looked into his frankly and happily.
After Maurice had gone, Rosalind still sat there in the wintry sunshine.
Things seemed very quiet just now, with Uncle Allan away for a week and
Aunt Genevieve not yet returned. She and her grandmother were keeping each
other company, and becoming better acquainted than ever before. Mrs.
Whittredge's glance often rested upon her granddaughter with a sort of
wistful affection, and once, when their eyes met, Rosalind, with a quick
impulse, had gone to her side and put her arms around her. Mrs. Whittredge
returned the caress, saying, "I shall be sorry to give you up, dearie."
On another occasion Rosalind had told how surprised she had been to find
that her grandmother did not wear caps and do knitting work. "But I like
you a great deal better as you are," she added.
Mrs. Whittredge smiled. "I fear I am in every way far from being an ideal
grandmother," she said.
Rosalind thought of all this, her eyes on the dismantled garden. The
flower beds were bare, the shrubs done up in straw, the fountain dry, and
yet something recalled the summer day when she had sat just here learning
her hymn. She remembered her old dreams of Friendship, and now she decided
that the reality was best. She shut her eyes and tried to think just how
she had felt that Sunday afternoon.
"What is the matter, little girl?" The magician's words, but not his
voice; nor was it his face she looked into.
"Father!" she cried,--"you dear! Where did you come from?"
It was some time before any connected conversation was possible.
"Why, father, how brown you are!"
"And Rosalind, how tall you are, and how rosy! To think I have lost six
months of your life!"
"And I want to tell you everything just in one minute. What shall I do?"
Rosalind said, laughing, as she held him fast.
It did indeed seem a task of alarming proportions to tell all there was to
tell; Rosalind felt a little impatient at having to share her father with
her grandmother that evening. And there was almost as much to hear,--of
Cousin Louis, whose health was now restored, but who was to spend some
months in England, of their adventures, and the sights they had seen.
"We shall want something to talk about when we get home," she was
reminded.
It would have been plain to the least observant that Patterson
Whittredge's life was bound up with that of this little daughter. As he
talked to his mother, his eyes rested fondly on Rosalind, and every
subject led back to her at last.
Rosalind, looking from her father to her grandmother, noted how much alike
were their dark eyes, but here the resemblance ended. Mrs. Whittredge's
oldest son, although he might possess something of her strong will, had
nothing of her haughty reserve. His manner, in spite of the preoccupation
of the student, was one of winning cordiality. Older and graver than
Allan, there was yet a strong likeness between the brothers.
Rosalind could not rest until she had taken her father to all the historic
spots, as she merrily called them,--Red Hill, the Gilpin place, the
cemetery, and the magician's shop, of course.
"Friendship has been good for you, little girl," he said, as they set out
far a walk next day.
"I used to think that stories were better than real things, father, but it
isn't so in Friendship. At first I was--oh, so lonely; I thought I never
could be the least bit happy without you and Cousin Louis; but the
magician and the Forest helped me, and since then I have had a beautiful
time. I love Friendship. I almost wish we could live here."
"And desert Cousin Louis and the university?"
"No, I suppose not; but we can come back in the summer, can't we? And, oh,
father dear, you'll join the Arden Foresters, won't you?"
As they walked up the winding road at the cemetery, Mr. Whittredge heard
something of those puzzles which had so disturbed Rosalind's first weeks
in Friendship, beginning with the story of the rose.
"It's funny, father, but I hadn't thought till then that grown people had
quarrels. I might have known it from the story of the Forest; I remembered
that afterward, and how things all came right."
"Poor little girl! You should have been warned; and yet in spite of it you
have learned that realities are better than dreams."
"Father," Rosalind asked abruptly, "why was it you did not come to
Friendship for so many years? Did not grandmamma like my mother? I think
I ought to know."
Mr. Whittredge smiled at the womanly seriousness of the lifted face. "I
think you ought, dear," he answered.
With her hand clasped in his he told her the story briefly, for even now
he could not dwell upon it without pain, and as Rosalind listened she
discovered that she had already heard a bit of it from Mrs. Parton and
Mrs. Molesworth at the auction.
"We must try, you and I, not to think too hardly of grandmamma now. She
has suffered a great deal, and it was your mother's earnest wish that the
trouble might be healed if the opportunity ever came." Patterson said
nothing of his own struggle to forgive his mother's attitude toward his
young wife.
"I think, father," Rosalind said, "that perhaps grandmamma is sorry. One
day, not long ago, I saw her looking at mother's picture. She did not know
I was there. She took it from the table and held it in her hand, and I am
sure she was crying a little."
That was a happy day, for now they put aside sad memories, and turned to
the merry side of life, Rosalind kept forgetting that her father had been
in Friendship before, and continued to point out objects of interest with
which he had been familiar long before she was born. So full were the
hours that it was growing dusk when they turned into Church Lane to call
on the magician.