ANOTHER ATTEMPT
When the Misses Flint saw the door shut behind Ladybird, and heard the
key click in the lock, they could believe neither their eyes nor their
ears.
Miss Priscilla rose and walked majestically to the door and turned the
knob, fully expecting the door would open. But it would not open, of
course, being locked, and the good lady, almost stupefied with anger and
amazement, uttered an explosive and exasperated "Well!" and dropped into
the nearest chair.
Miss Dorinda responded with a terrified and apprehensive "Well!" and then
the two sisters sat and stared blankly at each other.
Miss Dorinda spoke first, timidly.
"Priscilla, don't you think perhaps it is our duty to give a home to
Lavinia's child?"
"Duty!" exclaimed the elder sister, in a tense, restrained voice. "Duty!
To keep such a vixen as that in our house? No! I confess I had some such
thought during the night; but now I have only one desire, and that is, to
get rid of her."
"Yes," said Miss Dorinda, sighing; "of course she can't stay after this;
but she seems very affectionate and loving."
"Affectionate! Loving! Dorinda Flint, what are you talking about? Do you
call it affectionate to lock us helplessly in this room?"
"No; but that was impulsive, and because she wants to stay here. I don't
think she is really a vicious child."
"Well, I don't want to think anything about her!"
Miss Priscilla took up a newspaper and pretended to read, so desirous was
she of not appearing defeated; and, indeed, she would have stayed quietly
in that room all day rather than call for assistance, or in any way show
that she was at the mercy of her erratic niece.
Miss Dorinda was as much perturbed as her sister, but she made no effort
to hide it. She fluttered about the room, looked out of the window, tried
the door-knob, and at last sat down in a big rocking-chair and began to
rock violently.
Suddenly the door burst open and Ladybird came flying in.
"Aunties," she cried, "the house is on fire! What do you want to save
most?"
"Mercy on us!" cried Miss Priscilla, rushing from the room, "let me get
my Lady Washington geranium. The buds are just ready to open."
"Where is it? I'll get it," said Ladybird, dancing around in great
excitement.
"Up-stairs, on a stand by the south-room window; but you can't go
up--you'll be burned to death."
"No, I won't," screamed Ladybird, already half-way up-stairs; "I'll get
it. What do _you_ want, Aunt Dorinda?"
"I don't know,--everything! Oh, my lace handkerchief," called the
distracted lady. "And get some of your own things; and bring our
fire-gowns."
Meantime volumes of smoke rolled into the hall through the dining-room
door.
Suddenly Matthew's face appeared in the midst of the smoke.
"Don't be frightened, ma'am," he said; "it's all right now. The soot got
afire in the chimbley; but we've put it out. But if the little lady
hadn't been afther runnin' down an' tellin' me that the wall felt hot,
I'm thinkin' the house wud have been burned to the ground."
"Oh, Matthew, are you sure the fire is all out?" asked Miss Dorinda.
"And are you sure my house would have burned up but for that child?"
asked Miss Priscilla.
"Yis, ma'am, sure as sure! An' I'll jist open the windies till the shmoke
disappears."
Then Miss Priscilla called, "Come down, Ladybird; it's all right now."
And in a moment the child came flying down-stairs.
"I put the geranium back in its place," she said, "and I left your lace
handkerchief on your bureau, Aunt Dorinda; but I brought both your
smell-salts bottles, 'cause I thought you might be faint from the scare.
Now sit down and rest, won't you?"
She hovered about her aunts, ministering to each in turn, and her
caressing touch was so gentle, and her sympathy so sincere, that Miss
Priscilla, who was unaccustomed to such attentions, quite forgot she had
called her niece a vixen, and that, too, with good and sufficient
reasons.
But after a while, as her nerves became quieted and she felt more
composed, Miss Priscilla Flint determined to attempt again the dismissal
of her unwelcome guest.
"Lavinia," she said in a tone of firm decision.
"Oh, aunty, don't call me that; it makes me feel so old and grown up!"
"It is your name, and I have no desire to call you by any other. Lavinia,
you are my niece, and the child of my dead sister; but I am in no way
inclined to take you into my home for that reason. You have some kind and
winning ways, but you appear to have an ungovernable temper, which would
make you impossible to live with. How dared you lock the door on me in my
own house?"
"Why, aunty," said Ladybird, laughing at the memory of it, "that wasn't
temper, and I didn't mean to be rude; but truly, there was nothing else
to do. Why, if you had been out on the veranda when my trunks came, you
would have sent them back to Boston, and I didn't want them to go back;
so I just left you by yourselves until the man took them up-stairs."
"You think you have outwitted me, miss, but you will find that Priscilla
Flint is not so easily set aside."
"Oh, I'm not going to set you aside, aunty; that isn't it. I'm just going
to stay here and be your little girl--yours and Aunt Dorinda's."
"I think, sister, we might keep her a week on trial," said Miss Dorinda,
timidly.
Miss Dorinda always said everything timidly. In this respect she was not
like her niece.
"I shall _not_ keep her a week, nor a day; and no more hours than I can
help. I am going now to write a note to Mr. Marks, and tell him to come
back at once for her and her trunks. So, Miss Lavinia Lovell, you may as
well get yourself ready, for this time you will have to go."
"Do you know, it doesn't seem to me as if I would go this time," said
Ladybird, thoughtfully; "it seems to me as if I would stay here years and
years, until I get to be a dear old lady like you," and she patted the
top of Miss Priscilla's head. Then she danced out of the room, and out to
the garden, singing as she went:
"I am not going away to-day;
I'm going to stay and stay and stay."
When the luncheon-bell rang, she danced back again, and seeing a letter
on the hall-table addressed to Mr. Marks, she tore it into bits and threw
it into the waste basket.
The gay good humor of their visitor was infectious, and the Flint ladies
laughed and chatted over their luncheon, so that the meal was nearly over
before Miss Priscilla said:
"Mr. Marks will call for you at three o'clock, Lavinia."
"I don't think he will," replied the child, "because I tore up that
letter you wrote to him and threw it away."
"What!" gasped Miss Priscilla. "This is too much!"
"Well, you see, aunty, there was nothing else to do. If he'd got that
letter he would have come, and I don't want him to come, so I tore it up.
Don't write another."
"I won't," said Miss Priscilla, in an ominous voice, and snapping her
teeth together with a click.
But half an hour later the Primrose Hall carriage went down toward the
village, and inside of it sat a very determined-looking old lady.
She went to Mr. Marks's office and asked him to get his wagon and follow
her home at once, and bring back the young miss and her luggage.
"That firebrand as I saw at your house this morning?" exclaimed the old
countryman. "Wal, I guess she won't be so easy brung."
He chuckled to himself as he drove along the road behind Miss Priscilla
Flint; and when they reached the farm-house, he waited decorously for
further orders.
Then the hunt began. For Ladybird was nowhere to be found. Miss Priscilla
called in vain. Then Miss Dorinda called. Then they went up and looked in
the room which Ladybird had appropriated as her own.
Her three trunks stood there wide open and empty. Their contents were all
around: on the bed, on the bureaus, on the chairs, and many of them on
the floor. But no trace of the missing child.
Then Miss Priscilla called the servants.
"The little girl is hiding somewhere," she explained, "and she must be
found."
"Yes, 'm," Bridget said; and she began systematically to search the house
from attic to cellar.
Matthew shook his old head doubtfully.
"I'm thinkin' yez'll niver find her," he said. "She was a spookish piece,
an' the likes of her flies up chimbleys an' out of windies an' niver
appears ag'in."
Martha, much mystified, stared helplessly around the room, and in doing
so noticed a bit of paper pinned to the pin-cushion.
She handed it to Miss Priscilla, who read:
Aunty, Aunty, Do not look for me;
Until you send that man away, I'll stay just where I be.
"Oh," groaned Miss Priscilla, "what _can_ I do? We _must_ find her!"
Miss Dorinda felt pretty sure, in her secret heart, that they _wouldn't_
find Ladybird until that strange being was ready to be found; but she
continued looking about in her placid way, which did no good nor harm.
After an hour's search, the case did seem hopeless, and Mr. Marks
declared he couldn't wait any longer; so Miss Priscilla reluctantly let
him go away.
Two more hours passed; and then it was five o'clock, and still no sign
from the missing child.
Although they hadn't confessed it to each other, the Flint ladies were
both a little scared.
Finally Miss Dorinda said:
"You don't think she'd do anything rash, do you, sister?"
"From the little I've seen of her," replied Miss Priscilla, "I should say
that what she does is never anything but rash. However, I don't think she
has drowned herself in the brook, or jumped down the well, if that's what
you mean."
That was what Miss Dorinda had meant, and somehow she was not very much
reassured by her sister's word.
They sat silent for a while; then Miss Dorinda, with a sudden impulse of
determination such as she had never known in all her life, and, indeed,
never experienced again, said:
"Priscilla, I think you are doing wrong; and you needn't look at me like
that. For once, I'm going to say what I think! This child has been sent
to us, and in your secret heart you know it is our duty to keep her and
do for her. The Bible says that those who neglect their own families are
worse than infidels, and we have no right to turn away our kin. Your
dislike of visitors has nothing to do with the matter. The child is not a
visitor, as she says herself. And it makes no difference what kind of a
child she is: she is our sister's daughter, and we are bound by every law
of humanity and decency to give her a home. If father were alive, do you
suppose he would turn his orphan grandchild from his door? No; he would
do his duty by his own: he would be just, if he could not be generous;
and he would accept a responsibility that was rightly thrust upon him."
Miss Priscilla looked at her sister in utter amazement. Dorinda had never
spoken like this before, and it seemed as if the spirit of old Josiah
Flint was manifesting itself in his daughter.
But if Miss Dorinda had acted in an unusual manner, Miss Priscilla
proceeded to behave no less strangely.
At the close of her sister's speech, she suddenly burst into tears; and
the times in her life when Miss Priscilla Flint had cried were very few
indeed.
Then the younger sister was frightened at what she had done, and tried to
pacify the weeping lady.
"I know you're right, Dorinda," said Miss Priscilla, between her sobs;
"I--I knew it all along,--and I suppose we shall have to keep her. Father
would have wished it so,--and--and I wouldn't mind it so much if she
wouldn't--wouldn't leave the doors open."