A YOUNGER SON
WE found Miss Maria much improved but still bed-ridden. She said Wink's
medicine was the most efficacious she had ever had, as it had given her
a day of rest free from pain. I fancy the quiet had done her as much
good as the medicine. She regretted to report that Mr. Pore had
telephoned a peremptory message to the effect that Annie should come
home the first thing in the morning and bring her clothes.
"Now isn't that the limit?" stormed Dum. "What on earth can he want? We
haven't but three more days here and it seems to me he might----" But
Annie looked so pained that Dum didn't say what he might do.
"He needs me, I fancy," said Annie sadly.
"So do we need you! And how about Sleepy and Harvie and Rags?" But
Annie didn't know how about them, so she only blushed.
"Maybe you can come back," I suggested.
"No, I fancy not, or why should he say I must bring my clothes?"
All of us were at a loss to fathom the behavior of Mr. Pore, but we were
too tired to discuss it farther. We were thankful for the time we had
been able to wrest Annie from his selfish demands. I was sorry, indeed,
that Zebedee had attended to his old freight for him. I heartily agreed
with Dum's sentiments which she muttered under her breath:
"Pig!"
"Anyhow, we are going down with you," declared Mary.
"But I must go before breakfast," said Annie.
"Well, we can travel on an empty stomach quite as well as you can and a
great deal weller," insisted Dum, and Dee and Mary and I agreed.
"Please don't awaken me," said Jessie as she twisted her hair into the
patent curlers that she managed so well nobody but a girl could have
told that her curls were not natural. "I certainly want to sleep in the
morning. Dr. White begged me to go rowing with him before breakfast, but
I can't bear to get up so early in the morning. It seemed to distress
him terribly but then he is such a flirt one can never tell." All this
with many glances in my direction.
We had gathered in the room occupied by Tweedles and Jessie for a little
chat before turning in for the night.
"How cr-u-le!" exclaimed Mary. "What makes you think he is such a
flirt?"
"Ah, that would be telling!" and Jessie began dabbing on the cold cream.
It is strange how indifferent some girls are to what other girls think
of them. Jessie Wilcox, the most careful person in the world to look
well when any males were around, did not mind in the least letting us
see her with her hair twisted up in little wads and clasped with
innumerable arrangements made of wire covered with leather. The things
looked like huge ticks sticking out from her head, not such a shapely
head, either, now that one saw it with the hair drawn back so tightly.
Cold cream may be a future beautifier but certainly not a present one.
She laid it on in generous hunks and then massaged herself, contorting
her countenance in a most disconcerting manner.
"I don't think Wink is a flirt at all," said Dee stoutly. "He is a very
good friend of mine and I reckon I know him about as well as anybody in
the world. Of course he will flirt if it is up to him, but that is not
making him a flirt."
"Ah, indeed!" and Jessie began rubbing cocoa butter on her neck.
"Perhaps you don't know the flirtatious side of him."
"Thank goodness, I don't. He and I talk sense to each other," and Dee
scornfully sniffed the air. She and Dum hated the odor of cocoa butter,
declaring it made their room smell like an apothecary's shop.
"Why don't you and Dum come in our room for to-night?" I suggested,
scenting mischief as well as cocoa butter in the air, since the usually
tactful Dee was on the war-path. "You will be sure to disturb Jessie in
the morning if you sleep in here. Come on! I'll sleep three in the bed
with you and get in the middle at that," and so they came, expressing
themselves privately as glad to get away from their roommate, who did
smell so of cocoa butter and also looked so hideous with her hair done
up in those tick-like arrangements and her face shiny with grease.
"Cat! What does she mean by calling Wink a flirt?" raged Dee, who was
surely a loyal friend.
"Maybe he is one," suggested Dum.
"Virginia Tucker, I am tired unto death but I'll challenge you to a
boxing match if you say that again."
"You are no more tired than I am and I'll say it again!" maintained Dum.
"All I said was: 'Maybe he is,' and maybe he is!" No one of the name of
Tucker ever took a dare, and the twins crawled out of the great bed
where I had taken my place in the middle.
"Girls! Girls! You are so silly," I cried wearily. "You haven't your
boxing gloves and you know you might beat each other up with your bare
fists. This is no fighting matter, Dee, at least nothing to fight Dum
about. Go fight Jessie Wilcox! She is the one who has the proof of
Wink's ways."
We were relieved that my reasoning powers quelled the disturbance.
Tweedles got back into bed. The twins very rarely resorted to trial by
combat now. It had been their childish method of settling difficulties,
as their father had brought them up like boys whose code of honor is to
stop fussing and fight it out.
"I can't see why you think it is such an awful thing to call Wink a
flirt," I said, when all danger of a battle had subsided. "You certainly
flirt sometimes yourself."
"When?" indignantly.
"When you sell coffins to healthy young farmers," I asserted.
No more from Dee that night.
We were up early the next morning to escort Annie home, so early that no
one was stirring, not even the servants. It seemed ridiculous for her
to go so early, but the message from her father was one not to be
lightly ignored. She had told Miss Maria and the general good-by the
night before and Harvie was to drive her home, but when we crept
downstairs there was no Harvie to be found; so we made our way out to
the stable where Mary and I hitched up. As we drove off, all five of us
crowded into a one-seated buggy, we beheld a very sleepy Harvie waving
frantically from the boys' wing and vainly entreating us to wait; but we
weren't waiting for sleepy-heads that morning, and drove pitilessly
away.
There was an air of bustling in the store when we piled out of our small
buggy. Mr. Pore was in his shirt sleeves, his glasses set at a rakish
angle on his aristocratic nose and an unaccustomed flush on his usually
pale countenance. He was busy pulling things off of the shelves and
piling them up on the counters. The clerk (he called him a "clark," of
course, after the manner of Englishmen), was just as busy.
To my amazement I heard Mr. Pore say to a little boy who had been sent
to the store on a hurry call for matches: "Haven't time to wait on you;
go over to Blinker's."
What did this mean? Actually sending customers to the rival store!
"Father!" exclaimed Annie, as Mr. Pore gave her his usual pecky kiss. "I
didn't know you were going to take stock to-day."
"Neither did I, my dear." His tone was a bit softer than I had ever
heard it. And "my dear"! I had never heard him call Annie that before.
"What is it, Father?"
"I have news from England."
"Not bad news, I hope!"
"Well, yes! I might call it bad news."
"Oh, Father, I am so sorry!"
"Ahem! My brother, the late baronet, is--er--no more."
"You mean Uncle Isaac is dead?"
"Yes!"
"What was the matter? When did you hear?"
"A cablegram states he was killed in a recent battle," and Mr. Pore went
on making neat piles on the counter with cans of salmon. I wanted to
shake him for more news that I felt sure he had.
Annie took off her hat and tied on an apron ready to help in the arduous
task of taking stock. Tweedles and Mary and I stood in the doorway as
dumb as fish. Why should a man whose brother had recently died in
England feel a necessity of taking stock in a country store? It was too
much for us. Suddenly it flashed through my brain that maybe Mr. Pore
was going to England. His brother, Sir Isaac Pore, had a son, so Annie
had told me, who was, of course, in line for the title.
Mr. Pore finished with the salmon and then spoke with his usual
pomposity: "The message also states that my brother's only son has met
with an untimely death in the Dardanelles."
Annie dropped a box of soap and stood looking with big eyes at her
father.
"I find it necessary that we go to England, and before we go, I deem it
advisable to make an inventory of our goods and chattels."
"Go to England! When?" gasped Annie.
"I fancy we can arrange to be off in about a week."
This was news that touched all of us. Annie going to England! We might
never see her again, and her dried-up old father was standing there
announcing this fact with as much composure as though he had decided to
move his store across the road or do something else equally ordinary.
"You see," he continued with his grandiloquent manner, "the demise of my
brother and his son, who is unmarried, advance me to the baronetcy,
and----"
"Then you are Sir Arthur Ponsonby Pore!" blurted out Dum.
"Exactly!" he announced calmly, as though he had been inheriting titles
all his life.
"Is Annie Lady Anna then?" asked Mary.
"No, she is still Miss Pore. Only a son inherits a title from a
baronet," he said with a trace of bitterness. I remembered what Annie
had told me of her brother's death and her father's resentment of her
being a girl.
"Well, she would make a lovely Lady Annie all the same," said Dee. "I
bet everybody in England will just about go crazy about her."
"Ah, indeed!" was his supercilious remark to this effusion.
"We are going to come down and help you, Annie," I whispered. "I know
there are lots of things we can do. You will need help about your
clothes. I can't sew, but I can count clothes-pins and chewing-gum while
you sew. Don't you want us to help, Mr. Pore?"
That gentleman was as usual quite dumbfounded by being treated like an
ordinary human being, and with some hemming and hawing he finally
acknowledged that our assistance would be acceptable. His idea was to
sell his business and stock to the highest bidder.
Great was the consternation and surprise at Maxton when we announced the
choice bit of news that we had picked up that morning before breakfast.
Sleepy looked as though he might have apoplexy, his face got so red and
his hand trembled so. Harvie got pale and suddenly realized that Annie
was not just a little sister. Poor Rags put maple syrup in his coffee
and cream on his waffle in the excitement occasioned by the unwelcome
news.
They were at breakfast when we burst in on them, at breakfast and rather
sore with all of us for having run off without them. Jessie was holding
the fort alone, the only female present, as Miss Maria was still unable
to get up. That beautiful young lady was looking lovelier than ever in a
crisp handkerchief-linen frock. Her curls were very curly and her lovely
brunette complexion not at all the worse for the scorching sun of the
day before. My poor nose had six more freckles than when I came to
Maxton, six more by actual count, and there was not room for the extra
ones at all. Mary's freckles were like the stars in the sky, every time
you looked you could find another; Dee had her share, too; and Dum had
begun to peel as was her habit. Jessie was pretty, very pretty, but the
picture of her with her face all greased up and the tick-like curlers
covering her head would arise whenever I looked at her.
"Why doesn't Mr. Pore leave Annie here with us until the submarine
warfare is over with?" asked Mr. Tucker.
"We never thought of suggesting it," tweedled the twins.
"I did think of it but I knew she wouldn't be willing to have Sir Arthur
go alone," I said, rather proud of myself for being the first one to
give him his title.
"How much more suited he is to being a member of English aristocracy
than engaging in mercantile pursuits in America," laughed the general.
"I only wish his lovely wife might have shared the honor with him. Ah
me, what a woman she was!"
"He was mighty cold and clammy about his brother's death," said Dee.
"When Annie asked if it was bad news he had he said he might call it
bad news; but his tone was far from convincing."
"He hasn't seen his brother for over twenty years and he rowed with all
his family before he left England, so I reckon it was hard to squeeze
out many tears over his death. I felt awful bad about the poor young
son," and Dum looked ready to shed tears herself without having to
resort to the squeezing process. "'An untimely death in the
Dardanelles!' That sounds so tragic."
"Yes, that made me feel like crying, too," said Dee. "Just think of a
splendid young Englishman, handsome and brave and charming, being shot
to pieces by German bullets! I have an idea he had succeeded to the
title and estates only a few days before, and while he was sad about his
father, he still was looking forward to being the baronet when he got
home."
"What makes you think he was handsome?" put in the more matter-of-fact
Mary.
"I am sure he must have looked like Annie, and just think what a
wonderfully handsome man he must have been! He had her lovely hair, I
almost know he did, and great blue eyes and a strong, straight back,"
and Dum wiped her own eyes that would fill when she thought of the
splendid young Englishman gone to his death.
"I don't like to break in on this grand orgy of feeling," I said, "but
you must remember that Annie got her looks from her mother, as her
father had none to spare. This poor young man may have been all the
things you girls picture him to be, but he is just as likely to have
inherited his looks from Uncle Arthur Ponsonby. He may have had no chin
at all and have had champagne-bottle shoulders and a long neck."
"Page, how can you? Don't you know that people who meet untimely deaths
in the Dardanelles are always brave and handsome?" teased Zebedee. "For
my part, I am sorrier for the present baronet, Sir Arthur, than for the
late lamenteds. Only think how far the poor man has drifted from all the
manners and customs of his race!"
"Not manners, maybe customs! His manners are quite the thing to go with
titles, I think. As for Annie,--she has a way with her that will make
her shine in any society," I asserted.
Everyone agreed with me audibly but Jessie. She had not yet adjusted
herself to look upon Annie as anything but the badly-dressed daughter of
a country storekeeper, who could sing better than she could and had
attracted three out of the nine beaux on the house-party.