brightly-lighted supper table that evening, eating the good things
Cousin Hannah had provided with, it must be confessed, scant appetite;
their hearts were full, but each tried bravely to see only the bright
side, and, because they tried so hard, at last became really cheerful,
discussing their plans for the future with some enthusiasm. Only the
Babe wiped away tears, as she thought of Queen Berengaria out in strange
pastures without a soul to think of taking her lumps of sugar at
feeding-time!
"I'll plow up the land and sew it down in rye for cow-feed," said Jonah,
"before I git ready to go to gyardenin'. I got to hustle, too, for
time's a-flyin'."
"I won't set into work at the store till next week," said Roy, "for I
want to fix up that shack out in the yard for a studio--with _two_
display windows, if you please, one for cakes and one for 'takes'. A
skylight in the roof, and a little curtained-off dark room, and there
you are, all ready for business, Misses Spooner!"
"O, Roy, that _will_ be lovely--I simply couldn't get along without
you--none of us could, in fact. And I'm expecting my enlarging camera
any day. I reckon I'll spoil some pictures before I get used to it;
anyway, I can experiment on the family first."
"I'm so glad we've got a good cook-stove," said Ruth, contentedly. "I
expect to make money on bread. Cousin Hannah says she'll get me all the
orders I can fill."
"And what are me'n you going to do, mother?" enquired the Babe, with
interest.
"Well, I'm going down town to the store tomorrow and buy some pretty
gingham for cutting out into school dresses which you're to stitch up on
the machine, if you'll try to run the seams straight. Then, as soon as
they're made, we'll get some school-books, and a little girl about your
size will put on one of the new dresses, take the new books in her new
book-bag, and go right straight to school--where she'll be a credit to
us all, I'm sure."
"I'll learn to read so good that I'll be able to read all the books in
the whole round world!" sighed the Babe, happy in the promised
fulfillment of her highest earthly desire.
By the time the new studio was finished Elizabeth had quite a display of
photographs, having 'taken' the family and all the neighbors who were
handy, finding Maudie Pratt a willing and excellent subject, while Ruth
in her own show-window set forth a tempting array of tarts and pies and
doughnuts, in token that the bakery was in operation.
Mrs. Pell, the wife of Roy's employer, was their first customer,
bringing her twin boys of seven to be photographed.
"Their pa says if anybody can make 'em stand still long enough to get a
picture, they'll sure deserve a prize," declared the twins' mother
frankly, as she arranged Wilfred's big, smothering collar, and tied anew
the huge red bow under Wilmot's chin. "I taken 'em to the finest
picture-taker in Houston, last summer, and the best he could do was a
proof that had three heads apiece on it!"
"I think I can manage them, Mrs. Pell," said Elizabeth, confidently,
seeing more orders ahead if she could succeed where the city
photographer had failed. "They are such cute little fellows. Now,
boys, if you'll be real quiet I'll give you a doughnut apiece, in just
one minute," she promised the squirming twins, who brightened amazingly,
keeping expectant eyes upon the doughnuts which Elizabeth had placed at
just the proper elevation.
They were muffled and choked in stiff white pique suits, not a bit
comfortable, and their mother insisted that they should be posed in a
very stiff position, with their arms about each other. However, in the
end Elizabeth secured a very good negative, "at least it has only one
head apiece," she laughed. "But send them over when they have on their
everyday clothes, and let me take a picture for my window, if you don't
mind."
Mrs. Pell didn't mind--indeed she was highly gratified, and she sent
Wilfred and Wilmot over promptly, as soon as they had changed to their
old collarless and tieless play overalls. Then, while the Babe told
them a fairy story to excite the proper amount of interest in their
faces, and Elizabeth bade them eat doughnuts at will, to promote
happiness that "showed through," she snapped her camera on a most
excellent likeness--so good, in fact, that their proud father ordered a
bromide enlargement to be made, and advised all his customers to go by
the studio and see that cute picture in the window--the cutest thing in
the shape of a photograph he'd ever seen took.
Trade increased, and both girls soon had all they could do--indeed Mrs.
Spooner, in her heart, often sighed to think of the free young souls
doomed to have so much work and so little play in their busy lives.
It was plain from the first that the Spooner girls and Roy Lambert could
maintain the family, though it took every bit of strength and every
ounce of energy the three young people could bring to bear on it. Mrs.
Spooner drew a breath of relief when one day she saw her brother Harvey
turn in at the gate and calmly walk across to the studio as though he
were an ordinary customer, coming on an ordinary errand.
"Be nice to him, dear," she cautioned Elizabeth, when she informed her
of the unexpected customer in the studio. "I'm proud of your
independence, but it breaks my heart to have you girls working so hard,
and getting none of the pleasure nor the education that you ought to
have."
"I think we're getting lots of education, if you ask me," laughed
Elizabeth, as she put on her business apron and prepared to go out. "As
for pleasure--I never was so happy in my life--except for worrying a
little bit about father--and he may come home any day of course, and
stop _that_."
She ran across the yard to the little building, where she found her
uncle gravely inspecting the photographs in the window, having come to a
decision as to the style he preferred for a dozen cabinet portraits of
himself, which he announced to be the errand that had brought him to
Emerald.
It was to Elizabeth like a little play to keep up her business manner
with Uncle Harvey all through the sitting. She was urbane and
impressive. She told about it gleefully at the supper table that
evening.
"How much? And when can I have 'em?" the customer had asked as he arose
from his sitting. Elizabeth got his tone exactly in telling of it.
"One dollar down, five dollars when they are finished, a week from
to-day, I'm pretty well rushed with orders, and can't promise them any
sooner!" reported the photographer to her family.
"Then he took up his hat, and stood twirling it 'round and 'round, as if
he intended to say something else. I suppose he changed his mind, for
he went away without another word. I was glad; I wonder what he really
wanted. Something more than pictures, I'll bet. Anyway, I think I got
a good picture."
On the day appointed Harvey Grannis put in an appearance at the little
studio at nine o'clock in the morning. He took the filled envelope
Elizabeth handed him without a word, paid his money and lingered a
moment, never looking at the pictures.
"Hadn't you better see whether you like them?" asked Elizabeth. "We all
think them very good. I took the liberty of giving mother one, because
she liked it so much."
"O, er--by the way, how is Jennie?" asked Grannis, uneasily.
"I'll call her if you'd like to see her," returned Elizabeth promptly,
and there was a mischievous light in her eyes.
"No, no--not at all," stammered the ranchman. "That is, I have a little
matter to talk over later--never mind now."
They were crossing the side yard between the house and the studio.
Without waiting for further Instructions Elizabeth called blithely:
"Mumsy--Uncle Harvey wants to see you!"
She was sure that Mrs. Spooner was just inside by the window, anxiously
waiting for what her brother might see fit to say or do. The call was
responded to with unexpected, and so far as Grannis was concerned,
unwelcome promptness. Mrs. Spooner came out on the front porch and
walked down the steps to greet her brother. The Babe, always eager for
peace, though still shy of the man who had thought of shooting Queen
Berengaria, followed. Ruth advanced from her bakery as the two left the
studio. Old Jonah came around the house, wheeling a barrow, and to
complete the family picture Roy just then drove up in a grocer's
delivery wagon and stopped at the curb.
"Well, we all seem to be here," remarked Harvey Grannis, rather feebly.
A bicycle-mounted boy wheeled up perilously close between the
delivery-wagon and the gate, Roy turned with a little annoyance, then he
saw that the messenger held a yellow envelope in his hand, and was
approaching Mrs. Spooner.
The little woman's breath came in gasps, since the ceasing of her Cuban
letters she was always afraid of the sight of a telegram.
"Don't let her have it--I want to say something first," Grannis
protested, getting between the messenger and his sister.
"I'll open it for her--she would want me to," declared Elizabeth,
snatching the envelope from the messenger's hand.
"Why, it isn't addressed to mother--it's addressed to--to--_father_!"
And she let the yellow envelope flutter to the ground, where the
messenger regarded it with lack-luster eyes, then picked it up and
prepared to depart with it.
"Party ain't living here?" he asked, snapping together his receipt book,
which he had opened for signature.
"This here lady's his late wife," asserted Jonah, lugubriously, getting
things rather mixed in his excitement to see what the telegram
contained. "Give it to her--she's the proper person to open it."
Once more Grannis put himself between the messenger and his sister,
protesting again that he had something to say before she read the
message. And, at this second protest, there came an unexpected
interruption.
*CHAPTER IX*
*A Rose by Another Name*
In at the gate walked a tall, bronzed soldier in khaki, who reached
forward an authoritative hand, saying calmly to the messenger, "Give it
to me--it's mine."
Everything about them seemed suddenly unreal. Mrs. Spooner, catching
sight of the newcomer, quietly crumpled down in a dead faint at his
feet!
Elizabeth found herself running into the house for a glass of
water--moving like a person in a dream, making a desperate amount of
effort without advancing an inch. Then, all at once, she was back to
find her father kneeling on the gravel beside his wife, resisting Harvey
Grannis's efforts to raise her.
"Keep her head low, Harve--never raise a fainting person's head," he
cautioned.
The Babe was crying and snuggling in under her father's elbow, Roy had
rushed into the house and brought back the afghan from the couch.
"She's all right," said Captain Spooner, confidently. "She's coming
round now. What made her faint, do you suppose?"
"O, Father! Because you came back so suddenly," said Ruth.
"We hadn't heard from you in months, you know," Elizabeth added in a low
tone. "We've been horribly uneasy, daddy."
The captain turned and kissed his tall girl, then he slipped a careful
arm under his wife's shoulders. Ruth and the Babe, pushing for their
share of attention, had to be cautioned.
"Quiet, girls!" he warned. "We'll lift mother in to the couch, and then
I'll count you chickens and see how you look. Help me, Harve."
Harvey Grannis had been edging away with a very curious expression on
his face; now he had no other course left open but to come forward, lift
his sister's limp form and assist in carrying her into the house. On the
way she regained consciousness enough to protest lovingly, assuring them
that she was all right, and ashamed of being so silly as to faint.
"O, Father, why didn't you telegraph, so it wouldn't have scared
mother?" the Babe voiced the general wonder.
"I did," said Captain Spooner. "But Mr. Rouse was away on his vacation,
and the new man they had in the office sent the telegram out to the
ranch, because it was addressed to Silver Spur. You see, I'd got no
letters, and didn't know of your moving. The boy had it along with one
from Harve to me, re-sent from Havana. I'll read it now." And he tore
open the yellow envelope.
"O, Daddy," begged the Babe, frantically trying to smother him. "Don't
you ever, ever go to war again--no matter if that's a telegram from the
president for you to go back--don't you do it: And _what_ did you bring
us from Cuba?"
"Wait and see, you little rascal," laughed her father, lifting her in
his arms, and forgetting, for the moment, his telegram. "My! What a big
girl you are, to be sure! And how well you are all looking--except
mother. We must try and get some roses to grow in her cheeks. Jonah,
you old sinner--shake! We'll swap war stories to beat the band, winter
evenings out at the ranch. And Harve," slapping Grannis jovially on the
shoulder, "glad to see you, too. I'll read your telegram now. Why in
the world didn't you let the folks know long ago?"
"I--I was a little delayed," said Harvey nervously. "In fact, I just
came over to-day to tell 'em."
"And the interest money? I suppose you got that all right? O, yes--you
say so in this telegram. Got it right on the dot. No chance to act the
hard-hearted landlord and turn 'em out, hey?" and he laughed genially.
The world seemed bigger and warmer and sweeter to the children, now that
their father was at home; in the fullness of their joy they had no
thought of Harvey Grannis and the wrongs he had caused them to suffer.
Their uncle had been nervously turning his hat in his hand, going to the
door and coming back during the greetings between the re-united family.
It spoke well for his courage that he had not made his escape unnoticed.
"I--I just wanted a chance to speak about that, John," he began,
clearing his throat nervously. "Your check was all right, of course,
but I haven't banked it yet. In fact, I just came over this morning to
tell the folks, as I said."
Elizabeth realized in a flash that Harvey's telegram announcing Captain
Spooner's approaching arrival had come just before he came to order the
photographs. He was trying them for some decent way of explaining his
conduct. She remembered his peculiar manner, and parted her lips to
speak when some impulse of kindness made her close them again. Harvey
Grannis had done them all an injury, this was an opportunity for her to
forgive an enemy. The next moment she had reason to be glad.
"Then you did get the interest money all right?" the captain persisted.
The red blood flamed in Grannis's tanned and bearded face. His
confusion was painful.
"O, yes--O, yes, I got that," he admitted with an entreating glance
toward his sister. "I--there was something connected with that that I
had intended explaining to Jennie. In fact--if you'll let me, I'd like
to make you a deed to the ranch."
"Let you?" echoed Captain Spooner, his keen blue eyes on his
brother-in-law's face. "Make a deed to the ranch? Why, I only sent you
the interest money. The last payment remains to be met."
"Yes, I know," Grannis hurried to say, "but Jennie's my only sister, and
we had a little misunderstanding--she'll tell you all about it later, no
doubt. I feel myself to blame--that is, I was mistaken. I'd like to
make it up to--of course, I know there's some of your family that'll
never forgive me."
Then Elizabeth did a beautiful thing, and one which endeared her to all
of them. She marched across the room to Grannis, put out a slim hand and
said:
"I hope you don't mean me, Uncle Harvey,"--with a very distinct
emphasis--"for if I have anything to forgive--it's forgotten."
Harvey took the girl's hand with a fervor that was pathetic.
"We mustn't talk about disagreeable things when John's just got back,"
said Mrs. Spooner decidedly. "Harvey, you'll stay to dinner. Somebody
ought to go for Roy--he went right away, without giving John a chance to
meet him--he wanted us to be uninterrupted at our first meeting. I'm
sure Mr. Pell will let him off for the rest of the day, if we ask him."
"I'll go for him," offered Harvey, hastily, and before the eyes of the
astonished Spooners, he put his hat on his head and walked away in
search of Roy--the boy he had insisted upon regarding as a horse-thief!
While he was gone Captain Spooner was put in possession of all the
facts. He was inclined to be indignant over his brother-in-law's
conduct, but the girls joined their mother in excusing Grannis's
behavior, insisting that it came from an excess of zeal for their
welfare. When Harvey and Roy returned together, apparently on the best
of terms, Captain Spooner was ready to let by-gones be by-gones with his
brother-in-law, and to welcome Roy to the family circle with heart-felt
cordiality.
"I've heard all about you from mother," he said as he gripped the lad's
hand. "Only she says that he never can make me know just what you've
been to them all, and how very proud she is of her adopted son."
Roy blushed--praise was sweet, but embarrassing. "I bet they didn't
tell you a word about their goodness to me, sir," he returned, "I never
could make that up, no matter what I do."
Everything was satisfactorily explained over a good dinner. When you
come to think of it, a good dinner makes many things seem more
satisfactory. Ruth and Elizabeth cooked this one, the Babe set the
table, and all three girls kept jumping up from their places to run
around and hug the tall soldier father, to be sure that he was real, and
not just a beautiful dream. Mrs. Spooner sat at the head of the table,
with a color and radiance in her face that had long been absent. Harvey
Grannis talked more than anybody had ever heard him. He made good his
promise of the blue-eyed pinto pony to little Harvie--though he offered
no further suggestion as to the shooting of Queen Berengaria.
"Pinto's half Arab," he urged, "I broke him myself--wouldn't let the
broncho-buster touch him--he's as gentle as a dog."
All the elders at the table knew that Harvey Grannis was an excellent
horseman, and kind to animals, whatever he might be to his fellow-men.
They regarded the gift as highly as the Babe was certain to do when she
had fully made the acquaintance of the spotted pony.
"I'm awfully obliged to you, Uncle Harvey," she said at last. "If you
don't mind I'll change his name to Prince--as though he was Queen
Berengaria's son, you know. I expect I'll be mighty glad to have him,
because he'll be able to carry me to school. I couldn't go when we were
at the ranch before, because it was 'most too far for Queen Berengaria
to come every day, and she's so slow I'd have been sure to be tardy--I
don't like tardy-marks."
When Harvey Grannis said good-bye, it was plain they were entering on a
new era of friendship with the lonely man. Apparently he would be
willing to benefit his sister's family in the way that pleased them--not
insisting that it should be exclusively a way that pleased him.
When Grannis was gone Roy returned to his work at the grocery and the
Babe finally quieted down to her lessons. Mrs. Spooner asked Ruth if
she would not help her younger sister with them, leaving Elizabeth to
have a little talk with her father. The tall eldest girl followed her
mother into the other room, and soon found herself seated between the
two people who were so dear to her, the only parents she had ever known.
Thus she listened to a strange story told Captain Spooner by a soldier
of his own regiment--and who had died in Cuba.
"I don't remember him much on the way out, or in camp, except that he
was a very tall man, well set up and good-looking--a fine type of
Englishman," the Captain said. "He kept himself to himself, the other
men said, and although I remembered afterward that he had looked at me
curiously once or twice, I couldn't be sure that I'd ever seen him
before until he spoke to me one day. You'd sent me a lot of little
snap-shots, Elizabeth, and I was showing them to some of the officers
and mentioned your name. I saw him turn, and after awhile he came and
asked to look at the pictures. I noticed then that he didn't pay much
attention to any of them but yours, and when he handed them back he said
hastily that he wanted to have a talk with me. He had the reserved
English way, but I could see that he was much upset. The next day we
had a pretty hot little skirmish, getting some of us for good, and
wounding a good many. After the fight was over they sent for me to go
to the field hospital, and there he was, wounded badly--knowing he had
to die!"
Elizabeth was strangely shaken during this story, and she held fast to
her mother's hand, as though to make sure they were not giving her up.
Instinct told her of whom Captain Spooner was speaking, and when he went
on she needed no further explanation.
"He was an Englishman, sure enough, Elizabeth, of good family, but a
younger son, of course, and without any money. It seems he married the
daughter of the rector of his parish, and she hadn't anything either.
They came over to America--to Texas--thinking to make a fortune, but
found hard times and bad luck instead. His young wife died while they
were on their way to California, traveling in a wagon, and he was so
broken-hearted and helpless that he left his baby girl with--well, he
left her with a mighty good woman, and I guess he knew it!"
Captain Spooner glanced at his wife; Elizabeth dropped her head on her
mother's slender shoulder and cried softly.
"It makes me feel so sorry," she whispered. "Yet I'm glad too--glad I
belong to you, even if my father did desert me!"
"He didn't, Elizabeth. That is, not knowingly," Captain Spooner
explained gently. "When he went away from here he had promised to send
money for your keep, and he said he would come back for you. He did
send some money, then all at once it ceased, and we never heard from him
again. It seems he got word that you were dead. Some movers coming
through told him of a baby that had died, and they mixed it up some way.
He was sick and down on his luck at the time, and failed to write to us,
but he never would have done it if he'd known his daughter was living.
Philip Maude wasn't that kind of a man. He was a gentleman, born and
bred, and a brave man always."
"O, Father--I love to hear you say that!" said Elizabeth. "I'll always
be glad to think of him as brave and kind. But I thought--Cousin Hannah
said--wasn't the name _Mudd_?"
"Mudd? No, indeed. His name was Maude--M-a-u-d-e. A very good name,
too. What on earth made you think it was Mudd?"
"Cousin Hannah told me so," sobbed Elizabeth. "And O, now I can tell
you when it's all over--I've been so bitterly ashamed and miserable to
know that I, who used to really fool myself into thinking I was better
than other people, was just a miserable mover's child--and that my name
was Mudd!"
"Cousin Hannah always did pronounce it that way," said Mrs. Spooner,
"she may have thought it was spelled so--it's too bad to think how you
suffered for her mistake." The motherly eyes overflowed, realizing how
sensitive Elizabeth, who adored pretty names, must have felt at being
saddled with such a grotesquely ugly one.
"So Philip Maude thought his daughter was dead till I showed those
pictures. He told me that when he saw the little photograph it was like
looking at a picture of his dead wife. He saw how much I loved you, and
how proud I was of you, and he had a struggle in his mind to know
whether he ought to claim you after all these years; but he had decided
that he must give you up when the fight came on, and the decision was
taken out of his bands. The reason he sent for me at the last was that
he had, a few weeks before he enlisted, got notice of a small
inheritance that had fallen to him in England. It won't be more than
twenty-five thousand dollars--five thousand pounds, he called it--but he
made his will, and gave me his papers so that you might prove your right
to it, and he said that you might want to go home to your own people in
England. He sent you this ring, and this broken watch chain--the watch
itself was shattered by the bullet that gave him his death wound."
Elizabeth took the ring and chain he handed her and wept over them.
They seemed to bring the father she had never consciously seen very
close to her. It was not as though he took this father's place, but
rather as if he were some one among her ancestors, far back, almost in
another life.
"I hope I may go there some time," she said at last. "But you and
mother are the only father and mother I can ever have--and my home must
be here with you."
* * * * *