"Do something for you? Oh, Doctor, I should just love to!" Surprise and
pleasure caused Nathalie's eyes to light expectantly. And then, "Do tell
me what it is; perhaps it is something I can't do!" she said doubtfully.
"Oh, you can do it all right," asserted the doctor confidently.
"Remember the old adage, 'Where there's a will, there's a way.'" His
eyes twinkled humorously as he watched the girl's face. "But let's get
at the beginning of things. The other day as I was hastening to my
little African friend, Rosy, I heard some one talking to her. I stood
still, for it was some one telling the fairy tale of Jack and the Bean
Stalk.
"Now when I was a wee laddie," continued the doctor, "that fairy tale
was the star one to me, so I plead guilty, I was tempted and listened.
And then when I discovered that the Story Lady, as Rosy says, was a
sometime friend of mine, I found that old tale doubly interesting. A few
days ago, when talking to a patient, I happened to relate this little
incident in connection with something else I was telling, and then my
troubles began."
The doctor pretended dismay. "That lady has a crippled child who rarely
goes out, never meets children of her own age, but is compelled a good
part of the time to lie on a couch suffering more or less pain. This
little girl was injured in an accident which her mother, poor creature,
believes was her fault."
"Oh, how dreadfully she must suffer!" burst from Nathalie involuntarily.
"Yes, I sometimes think the poor mother suffers more than the child. Now
this mother, from a mistaken idea, believes it best to keep her child
secluded, thinking that the comments of strangers would hurt the child's
feelings and cause more suffering. So you see what a miserable life the
little one leads. Well, I must cut my tale short--" taking out his watch
and glancing at it; "perhaps it was something I said, I don't know, but
this lady asked me if I thought the young lady who was so good at
story-telling would be willing to come and amuse her child with stories.
You see I was in for it, but all I could do was to say I would ask her,"
the doctor's eyes sobered, "for I believe that this Story Lady girl is
not only a worth while girl--is that the way my wife puts it when she
lectures you?" the doctor's face had wrinkled into a smile again, "but
that she has one of the kindest hearts in the world."
"Oh, Doctor, Mrs. Morrow never lectures," answered Nathalie
enthusiastically; "she just talks to us in the sweetest way; we just
love to hear her. But, Doctor, why did you not tell the lady I would be
only too glad to tell her little girl stories, but if she suffers so
much it might tire her." This was all said in one breath.
"Not so fast, Blue Robin. No, I did not tell her you would, for I did
not know how it would strike you," rejoined the doctor gravely. "I only
told her what you could do."
"Oh," exclaimed his companion; "well then, please tell her the first
time you see her that I shall be delighted to do all I can for her
little girl."
"When I see her--well, I'm going to see her now." The doctor looked down
at Nathalie keenly. "If you are willing to give this pleasure suppose
you begin to-day?"
"To-day--you mean now--this morning?" exclaimed surprised Nathalie.
The doctor nodded gravely.
"Why, well, yes, I suppose I could go this morning." Nathalie wrinkled
her brows; she was wondering about dinner. "All right," she said in a
moment, "I'll tell Mother and get my hat!" She started for the door.
"Just wait a moment!" commanded the doctor suddenly, taking Nathalie by
the arm and peering down into her face with intent eyes. "I forgot
something, for amusing this little girl means that you will have to
promise two things."
"What are they?" asked the girl curiously.
"The first one is that you will have to promise--as a Girl Pioneer--" the
doctor's eyes gleamed again "not to betray to a living soul that you are
telling stories to this child; there is a reason."
"Oh, that is easy," nodded Nathalie; "that is, if you except Mamma, for
I always tell everything to her."
"Well, we'll trust Mrs. Page as to secrecy, and the next thing--this is a
big promise, for it will not be so easy to keep--is that when you go to
this lady's house you will consent to be blindfolded." The doctor looked
relieved.
"Blindfolded?" repeated puzzled Nathalie. "Why, do you mean that I will
have to have my eyes covered up so I can't see?"
Dr. Morrow nodded, his keen eyes watching the girl's face intently.
There was a pause. "Am I to go with you?" inquired Nathalie. The
doctor's gray head jerked again.
"Why, yes, I'm willing to be blinded--as long as you're with me to lead
me about--but what a strange idea!"
"Yes, it is a strange idea, and I tried to reason the lady out of it. I
even refused at first--and again yesterday--to ask you to do this
ridiculous thing, but after thinking it over I have ventured. You know,
there is the little girl to be considered, and you will?"
"Of course I will!" was the quick reply. "It is a funny thing to do,
makes me think of the heroine of some detective tale. Blindfolded! Oh,
it will be fun, a real adventure, I do wish I could tell Helen about it,
I know she won't tell."
"No, not yet," said the doctor, "just wait and see what happens. I'll
predict that after you tell one or two of your exciting tales the
blindfold act will be out of it. Now get your hat."
It was a glorious morning and Nathalie, in a merry chat with the doctor
as they glided down one street and up another, forgot to wonder where
they were going. But when they suddenly slowed up on a lonely road, the
doctor peered cautiously about and then with a flourish drew forth a big
black handkerchief, she remembered. She did indeed feel somewhat queer
as the doctor laughingly tied the black cap, as he called it, over her
eyes, and then, after seeing that it was not pressing too tightly,
started his car again.
This time the car went so swiftly that Nathalie caught her breath. O
dear, she was beginning to feel nervous. "It really seems as if you were
kidnaping me!" she cried, with an attempt at merriment.
"So I am," replied the doctor glumly. Evidently this blindfolding
business was not to his liking.
As the car came to a standstill the doctor cried, "Now, Blue Robin, we
are about to perform the first act in our little drama, so get up your
nerve."
"I hope you won't let me fall!" exclaimed Nathalie cheerily. "I don't
want to break my nose or anything just yet."
What a weird feeling it gave her to be led along a stone walk, then up a
few steps guided by her companion's strong arm, then evidently into a
hall, as Nathalie surmised by the polished floor covered with heavy
rugs. After being led stumblingly up the stairway--which she thought
would never come to an end--they crept slowly along for some distance;
she could not tell whether it was a hall or a room, and felt very
trembly as she afterwards told her mother, and she was brought to a
sudden halt by hearing, "Oh, Mamma, here she is!"
The voice did not belong to a small child and Nathalie, surprised, stood
still in embarrassed silence wondering what was coming next.
"Oh, Doctor, how kind you are!" cried another voice. "I had given you
up, how obstinate you must think me!" The voice faltered, and then
Nathalie felt a soft touch on her arm as it continued, "Oh, it was very
kind of you to consent to come and entertain my daughter, and to be
obliged to come this way, too. I feel guilty; I know how unpleasant it
must be to have something over your eyes."
"Well, don't worry over that now," was the doctor's terse admonition. "I
have complied with your requests--on second thought, and my young girl
friend has been most kind in agreeing to your wishes, for the present at
least. Later, I hope, you will change your mind about these blinders."
"Please don't scold," cried the voice again, "I know it is foolish of
me. I will lead you to a chair!" the owner of the voice exclaimed as the
girl gropingly put out her hand as if afraid of falling. Then the same
soft touch led the blinded one across the room. "No, you are not going
to fall; there you are all right now," she said, as Nathalie with a
sense of relief sank back in a chair.
"Now," continued the voice, "I am going to be your eyes and tell you
what is before you."
"That will be very nice," interposed embarrassed Nathalie, feeling
somewhat foolish at having to sit in this queer way before people. She
was at a loss what to say, but had time to collect herself as the lady
went on talking rapidly. She described the room with its hangings, the
pictures on the wall, told where the doors and windows were, and--"Oh,
here is the couch--" she hesitated slightly, "and on it is my daughter,
her name is--"
"Oh, Mamma, if you don't want the young lady to know my name, tell her
I'm the Princess in the Tower!" exclaimed the same sweet voice that had
called out when Nathalie first entered the room.
"That will be just the thing, 'the Princess in the Tower,'" laughed the
lady lightly. "Now, Princess, I am going to leave you to entertain
Miss--"
"Nathalie Page," interposed the girl quickly, who, reassured by the
laughing tone of the young girl on the couch, had begun to recover from
the awkwardness of her plight. Somehow the situation appealed to the
girl's imagination and she began to enjoy it. "Oh, I ought to be the one
in the tower," she merrily asserted, "for I feel as if I were a prisoner
with this funny thing over my eyes."
"It is too bad," cried her companion sympathetically, "but you know it
is a whim of Mamma's. You see," she explained, "I had an accident when I
was a child, and it has made me deformed--" there was a pathetic note in
her voice. "Mamma is so sensitive, she is afraid that if people see me
they will make unkind remarks."
"Oh, how could any one be unkind?" exclaimed horrified Nathalie.
"Well, they are sometimes. I used to be sensitive myself, too, but I'm
getting used to it. I tell Mamma if I don't mind she ought not to. Yes,"
she ended sadly, "I am indeed a prisoner shut up in these big gray
walls."
"How hard it must be!" answered Nathalie. "But do you never go out?"
"Sometimes I go in the garden. I used to drive, but the people in this
town are so curious; they stare so. I believe they are worse than in the
city, where I suppose people are used to all kinds of strange sights.
But there, I'm doing all the talking, please tell me about yourself! I'm
so glad to know some one who comes from New York. The doctor told me you
were a New Yorker; he told me, too, that you were very clever, and that
you told stories beautifully."
"Nonsense," exclaimed Nathalie. "The doctor is a dear, but he natters
me; I am not clever, I wish I were. I studied hard at school and am
ready to enter college this fall, and as I am only sixteen people think
it very clever for a girl to accomplish, but I don't see why a girl
can't do it as well as a boy. But now I'm not going to have a chance to
show people whether I am really clever or not," and then she briefly
told about her disappointment in having to give up college.
"But what are you going to do if you do not go to college? Please tell
me!" said the princess, as Nathalie hesitated. "I just love the sound of
your voice!" burst from the girl impulsively.
Nathalie laughed at this extravagant praise, wondering for a moment if
the young girl were not making fun of her. Loath to believe that she
could be so rude, however, she went on and told of her city life, her
schoolmates, about Dick's accident, and how they came to settle in
Westport, and then she stopped. She had been on the verge of telling
about the Pioneers when she recollected that the doctor had said she was
to tell the child stories. "Oh, I must stop talking--I was to tell you
stories--what will your mother think of me?"
"That is all right," promptly returned the girl, "you are here to
entertain me; that's what she told the doctor, and if I would rather
have you talk than tell stories, it will be as I say."
"Are you sure of that?" questioned conscience-stricken Nathalie. "The
doctor told me I was to tell you stories."
"Of course he did, but because he said a thing doesn't make it so; Mamma
told him that, I guess, but you are really to do as I say."
There was a note of decision in the girl's voice, which was an
intimation that she was used to having her own way. Nathalie somehow
felt awkward and uncertain as to what course to pursue, and became
suddenly silent, inwardly racking her brains, trying to think of some
story that would please a young girl of about the age she judged her
companion to be.
"Oh, aren't you going to tell me about the Girl Pioneers?" was the
question that suddenly interrupted Nathalie's train of thought.
"The Girl Pioneers!" echoed Nathalie, wondering how her companion came
to know about that organization.
"I want to tell you a secret," the princess whispered at that moment.
Nathalie felt a slim hand touch her with a clinging pressure on the arm.
"Do you know the doctor and I are great friends, we have lots of jolly
talks together. Oh, I just love to hear his step; don't tell, but
sometimes I make believe I'm suffering terribly so Mamma will send for
him!"
"But you shouldn't do that!" cried Nathalie, rather shocked at the idea
of simulating pain, suddenly remembering a story she had heard of a
young girl who had finally come to suffer from the very disease she had
feigned.
"Oh, what difference does it make as long as it brings him?" retorted
the princess. "You see he tells me of the outside world, and makes me
laugh when I have pain, for I do have lots of it sometimes. One day when
I was having an awful time with my back he almost made me forget the
pain by telling me some of the funny things that have happened to the
Boy Scouts and to the Girl Pioneers.
"He told me all about you, too, how you sprained your foot and about
your brother Dick, and about your finding the blue robin's nest in the
old cedar. He said you were pretty, too. I like pretty people. I wish
you didn't have that horrible thing on your eyes, I want to see them.
Mother said I would have been pretty, too, if I had not had this
terrible hump--oh," she cried abruptly, "I was not to tell you anything
about myself, for I'm a horrible thing to look at now."
"Oh, no, you can't be," exclaimed Nathalie involuntarily, for by this
time the sweet girlish voice and soft clinging hand had stirred her
imagination, and the pictures presented had made the make-believe
princess a most beautiful creature.
"Oh, but I am," persisted the girl in a resigned voice. "But then, do
tell me about the Pioneers!" Then noting Nathalie's reluctance, she
called out in a high, shrill voice, "Mamma, come here, I want you!"
"What is it, darling?" answered her mother coming hastily from the
adjoining room, where she had been conversing with the doctor. "What
does my princess want?" remembering the role the girl had assumed.
"The princess wants to be obeyed," answered that personage imperiously.
"Miss Page refuses to talk about herself or to tell me anything, because
she says you ordered her to tell me only stories."
Nathalie's face reddened under her black mask, "Oh, no," she interposed
swiftly, "I did not say it that way. I said the doctor had asked me to
come here and tell you stories, but then I supposed you were a little
girl."
"No, I am not a little girl," replied the princess, "I am fourteen."
"Miss Page, if you do not mind I shall be glad if you will do as
Ni--as--the princess desires," said her mother pleadingly. "She is an
invalid, you know, and, I am afraid, sadly spoiled."
"Very well," rejoined Nathalie briefly, feeling somewhat relieved to
think she could talk about the Pioneers and not to have to think up a
story. Yet it did seem strange to ask her to come there and tell stories
and then ask her not to do so.
"Now that you have permission, please go right ahead and tell me
everything you know about the Pioneers!"
"That will be delightfully easy, I can assure you," exclaimed Nathalie.
"Although I am a new Pioneer, I am beginning to be very enthusiastic. I
can't tell you much about the hikes for I have never been on a long hike
yet. We were going on a bird hike the other day--" then she remembered
the search party and its results, and in a few words told about Rosebud
and the morning spent in searching for her.
"Oh, that was just fine of you," cried the princess as Nathalie came to
the part where the Pioneers had acted as if they did not want to hunt
for the little girl. "And those girls! I think they were very selfish,
but go on and tell me some more about the Pioneers!"
Nathalie, thus pressed, told of the Pilgrim Rally, the coming of the Boy
Scouts, the Pioneer dance, and then lastly how she had accepted Miss I
Can, the motto of the organization, as a very dear friend, and how she
was trying to live up to it. The girl could not account for the feeling
that made her sacrifice her usual reserve in regard to her inner life,
and tell this make-believe princess about what she was trying to do. In
thinking it over when by herself, she concluded that perhaps it was the
lesson in this little motto that she had intuitively felt might help the
little prisoner in the tower.
"Oh, I wish you would get up a story club for me!" exclaimed the blood
royal, as Nathalie finally ended her Pioneer recital by telling about
the story club the girls had formed to tell stories to the little
children in the colored settlement.
"Wouldn't it be just lovely! And they would all be real live girls, too,
not story-book people, for oh, Miss Page, I get so tired of book folks!
I want to meet just real every-day girls. That is why I coaxed my mother
to get the doctor to have you come here and tell me stories, but don't
say another word about telling me stories," she lowered her voice, "for
that was just a trick to get Mother to consent. When I want a thing I
just keep plaguing her and then she lets me have my way."
"Oh, but you ought to tell your mother everything," exclaimed her new
friend, somewhat repelled by this frank admission of deceit. "I always
tell my mother everything, why I could not sleep at night if I thought I
had deceived her."
"Everything is fair in love and war, that's what my governess used to
say, but she was a horrid thing," the princess confessed candidly; "I
just hated her. She had a beau and I used to steal his letters and
pretend I had read them, just for the fun of seeing her get in a rage.
But go on, and tell me more about those girls."
The last word had barely left her lips when a shriek, shrill and
terrifying, rang through the room. Nathalie jumped up in a spasm of
terror, but before she could ascertain what it was, another one, even
shriller and more prolonged than the first one, as it seemed to the
frightened girl, sounded right in her very ear. Her heart leaped to her
throat, a stifled cry escaped her as she dropped back in her chair
cowering with fear. Then came another cry, followed by weird, demoniacal
laughter. Nathalie put her hands up to her face determined to tear off
her bandage, for that blood-curdling shriek, that hideous laugh, she had
heard before--and then she remembered--oh, she was in the house of the
Mystic!