DISPOSSESSION AND POSSESSION
"WELL!" said Rosie when she heard the great news. "Well, if that hain't
just like all I ever heard 'em tell of old Bittenbender! To go and
hide the will, and then let it in a place where 'twould be sure to
be found by whoever come here after him, so they'd have to stand the
loss, or else be a big rascal like he was! I always heard 'em say old
Bittenbender was the greatest scamp around here, but to hide the will,
and then give the place he didn't own to pay his debt, and then let the
will behind him, yet, where you'd be sure to find it, beats everything
I ever heard."
"It looks as if the late unlamented Isaac Bittenbender enjoyed a joke
of his own kind, though it isn't the sort to please all tastes in
jokes," remarked Bob. "It is lucky for him that the will wasn't found
while he still lived--it might have given him another sort of residence
than the Ark."
"Well, it's a lucky thing for Gretta the farm come into honest hands,
or the folks that found the will might have kept still about it and
she'd never have been no wiser," remarked Rosie. "As 'tis, what you
goin' to do about it?"
"Not that," said Laura, unnecessarily. "Don't you know, Rosie, how hard
Aunt Keren tried to find the will, so she could give the place over to
Gretta?"
"Why, you don't suppose I thought your Aunt Keren was a-goin' to keep
it?" Rosie expostulated.
"We are going to have the will proved, admitted to probate, and we
shall install Gretta as mistress of the Ark just as soon as we can
possibly do so," said Miss Bradbury, smiling into Gretta's perturbed
face. "Then we shall see what arrangement we can make with the owner by
which we can stay on here for a time, instead of her living with us,
but otherwise with no change of conditions. Did you ever see a girl
so cast down by good fortune? Gretta, girl, pray look cheerful! Gaze
out of the window at your own broad, snow-clad fields. Look around you
at your own walls, and consider what a happy change this makes in the
fortunes of a girl who has had nothing in all her life to call her own,
not even a father's house! And now she is an independent farmer who,
with a little help, can subsist off of her own good acres!"
"I wish it could stay yours, and you would let me live with you; it is
dreadful to take anything from you when you have given me so much,"
repeated Gretta, unable yet to take any view of the morning's events
except as they affected her friends.
It was impossible, however, not to feel some little thrills of
pleasure as the idea of ownership became more familiar.
The snow of that Saturday went off like the mists of a July morning. On
Monday the Scollards rejoiced in a premature sleigh-ride, though the
drifts made some of the exposed points of the roads nearly impassable.
On Tuesday the same roads were running with rivulets of water, and
either sleighing or wheeling was nearly impossible.
Gretta's distress at being an heiress went through nearly the same
process as the snow. Under the sunshine of Miss Bradbury and the
Scollards' unselfish pleasure in her good, she began to brighten. Then
she began to take pleasure in the thought that she could actually
benefit them and shelter them under her roof, giving as well as
receiving. It never occurred to any of them that they should separate,
and in that case what did it matter, after all, in whose name the farm
stood? It was and still should be, Gretta's home and that of its new
inmates. It was a beautiful thing--provided no one else were the worse
for it--that by her grandmother's will the old house had fallen to her
grandchild, and that now Gretta Engel had a place, a holding in the
county, and could take her position among her neighbors, no longer
an object of charity. For even Miss Bradbury's, and the Scollards'
charity--though it was of the sort meant by the strict meaning of the
word--was a burden, lighten it as they would.
Mrs. Scollard was so much better that it was hard not to be quite as
well as before she broke down, and to know that she was not equal to
assuming the duties of her former clerkship. She talked a great deal
with her older children as to their next move. The Ark had been a rest;
it had saved her, but obviously they could not live on in dependence
forever; there must be some way found to resume their independent
existence. Bob could go back at any moment to Mr. Felton, but the
five dollars a week at which he must begin would not support six
people--even youngsters' sanguine views of practical questions had to
admit that fact.
Margery, Happie and Gretta had a plan; they spent hours discussing it,
but nobody yet knew what it was. In the meantime Mrs. Scollard cudgeled
her brains by day--and by night too, to her own harm--trying to think
of some way out of her troubles.
So when Bob drove up from the post-office on a day a little past the
middle of November with a letter among her mail from the firm for which
she had so long been confidential correspondent, Mrs. Scollard tore it
open eagerly, and gave a queer little sob of joy as she laid it down
after reading it.
"Oh, dear Miss Keren, do listen to this!" she said. "They ask me to
come back if I am at all able, to take charge again of their foreign
correspondence. And they say if I am not equal to resuming fully my
old duties, at least to come to assume general supervision of that
department at a smaller salary, if the work must be divided. They beg
me to take my old position at fifty dollars a week, as before, or to
take half the work at twenty-five dollars a week, until I am able to
do more. Thirteen hundred a year--we can't live on it, but perhaps we
could manage? I don't believe I am equal to resuming everything--manage
to add to it, I mean?" Mrs. Scollard looked vaguely at her hearers,
thinking aloud.
"Now here is where we come in!" cried Happie, starting up in rapture.
"We have the best plan, Margery, Gretta and I, but it never seemed to
us enough to rely on. But it would help lots; you can't tell how much,
till it gets under way. We want to open a tea room, and a circulating
library, and we want to make it lovely, somewhere near the drive, or
the speedway, or somewhere where people get tired and thirsty, and
blown to pieces. We may have to dress up as geishas, because that's the
way it's usually done, but we don't want to; it's so silly! The girls
never look Japanese."
"Really, Keren-happuch, what are you talking about?" demanded Miss
Bradbury.
"Happie is trying to tell you about something we have talked over of
late--it was her idea in the first place," said Margery. "We thought
that we might--No; that isn't the beginning either! We thought that we
must earn money somehow. And we never were able to think of anything
that we could do; we are all so very young. And mother would be
miserable if we so much as suggested anything that was--well, public,
or which threw us in with people or things that weren't very nice
indeed. And Happie said: A tea room! And it really does seem to be the
very thing, only we couldn't see, much as we wanted to, how it would
bring in a great deal of money after we had paid rent and all the other
expenses. Even though we meant to add a circulating library to it."
"What does the tea room mean, precisely?" asked Miss Bradbury.
"It means some dark, rich paper--probably red--on the walls, and
lots of little tables all around, and the sweetest little Japanese
teapots--the kind you get at Mardine's for fifteen or twenty cents
on the bargain tables--and dainty teacups, and sugar and cream jugs,
and little plates of thin wafers and crackers and sweet cakes, and
maybe sardines, because you have to have lemons anyway, for people
that take it in their tea; and I say lettuce for sandwiches in the
season when it's not too expensive, and, well, 'most anything dainty
and good, such as you would get at a tea. And lanterns all around, and
the windows darkened with pretty warm, dark Japanesey curtains, so you
could have the lanterns lighted all the time. And Laura wants incense
sticks, but I don't, because if any one burned those things where I
was eating, I shouldn't be eating long. And then book shelves, and new
novels in them, and let people help themselves, and charge ten cents a
week, three books at a time twenty-five cents--oh, a regular duck of a
place!" said Happie in a breath, forestalling Margery.
"A regular poll parrot of a place, I should say, if you are going in
for ornithological comparisons, Happie," protested Miss Bradbury. "How
you do run on! I don't think I understand. Are you intending to rent a
room, and furnish and carry it on in the way you describe--or rather in
the way you sketchily outline?"
"We wanted to do it, Aunt Keren," Margery answered for her sister. "But
we didn't see any chance of getting enough out of it to warrant trying
it. Now, if mother were going to be sure of thirteen hundred a year--if
she is strong enough to take half her old work--and Bob went to Mr.
Felton at five dollars a week, then I think we girls could make up the
rest that we need for expenses. Gretta, we thought, would come down
with us for the winter, anyway, and help us in the tea room."
"I am better able to go to the office every day than I am to feel
troubled," said Mrs. Scollard truly. "And really I am almost perfectly
well again; the Ark and this mountain air have saved me. I certainly
shall accept this offer."
"And I will back the girls in this plan to be useful which they have
concocted," said Miss Bradbury. "It is really not a bad plan, and
perfectly feasible. And being their own plot it would be far better
to help them to carry it out, than to offer them a substitute for it.
I'll tell you what I will do, Margery and Happie! I will make myself
responsible for the rent of your tea room, and you may repay me if
I have to meet it, and that will leave the success wholly yours, if
success it is to be. After the two first months it will have been
tested sufficiently for us to judge."
"Aunt Keren, you are the very best namesake--named-after-sake--a girl
could possibly have!" cried Happie in a rapture. "You don't know how we
longed and burned to try this scheme, but we didn't see how we could do
it without capital enough to pay the rent until we were on our feet.
And now you say this! Bless you, bless you!" And Happie seized her
financial sponsor, and name donor, around the neck in a hug that set
the dignified Miss Bradbury awry in collar, tie, and hair combs.
Miss Bradbury adjusted these accessories with a protesting exclamation
that her face belied. She was not only getting used to Happie's
irruptiveness, but liking it. "Now I'll tell you something further,"
she said. "In going about among various degrees and kinds of poor
people in New York, I often come upon some one who has a room to rent
or a lease to get rid of--sometimes a whole house. In the spring, in
the late winter, more correctly, I knew of a dear little, quiet widow
who had undertaken more than she could carry on in the matter of
rent. She had found a pretty shop, with two rooms above it which she
had taken for her dancing school. When I last heard of her she wanted
to keep only the two rooms above stairs for the school, and to rent
the shop. If she should happen to be offering her place still--she
wouldn't rent it except to the right tenants--it would be the very
thing for you, a pretty room, precisely the right size, with large
windows, and directly on the way to everywhere. More than that Mrs.
Stewart would be there to look after you, and make your undertaking
safe from any doubtful or unpleasant features--she would chaperon you
children. Charlotte, we could not let them open their tea-library
combination without an older person to take care of them, could we?"
"No, indeed; but you are all talking and planning so fast that I
can't follow you. It is perfectly safe to say I agree with that last
statement, but I'm not sure I agree to anything else," said Mrs.
Scollard, looking as excited as her children, and far more bewildered.
"That's all that is necessary just now, my dear," said Miss Bradbury.
"I think I will go to New York in the morning, see Mrs. Stewart, and
get her prices for her shop, if she has it still."
"Oh, Aunt Keren, no!" Margery protested. "You must not go to town just
for us. And how we are rushing on with our plan when we never really
dreamed that we could carry it out, either!"
"I should not be going down just for that, Margaret," returned Miss
Bradbury. "I intended going down in any case. I want to drum up guests
for Thanksgiving Day--I thought I would bring Ralph and Snigs back with
me."
"Aunt Keren! And you say it so quietly!" cried Happie with her voice
full of admiration points. "We're having a Thanksgiving Day this
moment. It will be perfectly beyond-tellingly-glorious to have those
two boys up here now--especially that it looks like more snow!"
"It will be delightful, dear Aunt Keren," said Margery, with her gentle
smile.
"Delightful! Do hear how calmly she speaks, with that temperate, adult
adjective!" cried Happie. "Don't leave off extravagant words, and
speak like a perfect lady yet, Peggy! There's so much time to be calm
and grown-up! Though I suppose you would rather Aunt Keren asked some
one else than our Patty-Pan boys!" And Happie glanced significantly
at a letter in Margery's hand; the fine, eccentric writing, and the
Baltimore postmark had become familiar to the Ark. Through his letters
Robert Gaston, Margery's Bar Harbor friend, was winning her mother's
respect and liking.
Margery smiled unperturbed, though with heightened color. "I shall be
very glad to see the boys, if they come," she said heartily.
"Well, I must go find Gretta and tell her the news of the last hour,"
said Happie rising with a sigh, for no other joy could assuage the
pang this friendship of Margery's cost her whenever she remembered it
"Robert Gaston is a telescope turned the wrong way," she declared,
"He makes me see Peggy 'way off."
"Just think," Happie added from the doorway. "An hour ago we were
without prospects, and since then mother has had her letter, Aunt Keren
has given us her blessing, and has promised to help us, and she is
going down to-morrow to look up our room, and to bring up Ralph and
Snigs! I never heard of such an eventful hour outside the theatre, and
there of course you watch years pass at a matinée. Won't Gretta and Bob
be dumbfounded? Don't you want to come with me, Margery, and hear the
crash when I break the news?"
"Put that way I believe I must come," laughed Margery, as she followed
her sister.
There was no "crash" audible in the library where Miss Bradbury and
Mrs. Scollard lingered, but they heard a wild whoop from Bob, and then
a clamor of voices as he and Gretta and Laura poured out questions, and
Margery and Happie answered them as excitedly.
"Dear Miss Keren, you are so good to me and my children!" said Mrs.
Scollard, as she saw that Miss Keren was listening to the babel in the
room beyond in the highest satisfaction. "Think of all that we owe you
already! And now you offer to be responsible for the girls financially,
and to let them try this scheme of theirs! I can't bring myself to the
point of feeling less than guilty to allow you to do so much."
"You may feel perfectly innocent, Charlotte, for I should do it in
one form or another whether you would or no," affirmed Miss Bradbury.
And when she said a thing she left little room for doubt that she
meant every word that she said. "I have certain plans tucked away in
the back of my head in regard to your children," she continued, "and I
shall certainly carry them out. Don't forget, Charlotte, that in all
the world there is no one who has the claim of kindred upon me; no one
with closer ties between us than bind me to you, my beloved friend's
daughter, and to her grandchildren, your children. So I shall look
after them as far as I can. So much for that part of it, and never let
me hear you allude to obligations again! As to the rest, I am not,
privately, especially sanguine about the success of the plan these
girls have made, and yet it really is a good one, if their inexperience
and youth do not defeat it. I thoroughly approve of helping people
to carry out their own ideas, however, and not in trying to force
one's own upon them. So--unless you had objected--I should like to
be responsible for the beginnings of the attempt, and let the girls
consider what I expend as a debt to be repaid. I shall back them,
Charlotte; that's all."
"And enough," supplemented Mrs. Scollard. "A financial backer is styled
an 'angel,' isn't he--in theatrical parlance? I begin to see why."
Miss Bradbury departed in the early frosty morning of the next day.
She was gone a week before she wrote announcing her return on the day
before Thanksgiving. Not a word did she say of her errand, nor allude
to the coming of the Gordon boys. But just when Happie and Bob--and
the others of a lesser degree--were beginning to make up their minds
that they were defrauded of all that would make the festival festal,
and that their disappointment was too sharp to be borne, there came
a telegram of but two words. "Boys coming. Keren-happuch," was the
burden of the dispatch. There was but one conclusion possible: Miss
Keren-happuch was indulging in teasing.
"Youth must be catching," remarked Happie, flying about the room with a
feather duster, for it was too late to use a cloth--there were a dozen
things to be done, and train time drawing on apace. "Aunt Keren would
never have played us a trick like this before she had had the benefit
of living with five young Scollards."
"You are Ralph's hostess this time, Gretta," said Laura. "Since he was
here you have got the Ark."
"That's so!" cried Bob. "Let's dress up Gretta and put her on a sort of
throne in the corner, and bring Aunt Keren and both boys to pay homage
to her as their hostess."
"Well, I guess you won't!" cried Gretta, flushing at the bare idea of
such a thing.
"Let's all dress up," cried Polly. "Let's look just as funny as we can,
and stand in a row all across the steps when Bob drives up."
"Why, that's a great idea, pretty Poll!" Happie approved her. "There
isn't time--yes, we'll make time! Hurry up, Gretta; don't stop to
polish that glass another minute! Come on up-stairs, and let's whisk
through our work there in a jiffy. Then we'll make sights of ourselves
with all the old things we can find, and we'll put a big cambric collar
on Dundee, and a white ribbon on Dorée, and we'll all sing--what on
earth is the best thing to sing when they arrive?"
"Hail to the Chief," suggested Margery.
"Who knows the tune?" demanded Happie. "No, that won't do. What's the
best tune? I'll make up words for it; there's no reason why Laura
should have a family monopoly of Odes on Great Occasions."
"John Brown's Body--The Battle Hymn of the Republic--is the best tune I
know when you want an awful noise, yet one that has a ring in it," said
Bob.
"Right you are, my Bobby!" cried Happie. "There's nothing else has
the swing and rush of that air. Let's see!" She began to hum the air
rapidly as she switched the cover off the dresser in Bob's room, which
both the Gordons were to share with him. "This will do!" she announced.
"Give me something to write on; lend me your pencil, Bob!" She snatched
up a box cover, scribbled hastily for a few moments, scratching out at
intervals, but not much, and when she had finished read her effusion
to the others.
"You're all right, Happie!" said Bob with as much heartiness in his
commendation as the Academie Française could have shown in crowning a
poem, if with less elegance. "You sing that when we drive up, the whole
crowd of you in a row, and you'll make a hit. Now I've got to hurry off
and harness, or I'll keep them waiting."
An hour later the hit was made. Margery and Gretta were almost of
equal height; they headed the line, Margery in a sheet and pillow case
costume, like a ghost; Gretta attired in a bright blue wrapper, with a
patchwork quilt worn as a shawl, and her pink sunbonnet on her head,
hastily trimmed with all sorts of artificial flowers in various stages
of nearly falling off. Happie was a bride, pinned into window curtains,
and with an old lace curtain for an impressive veil that trailed two
feet, at the least, behind her. Laura wore a long velvet skirt of her
mother's, over which she had draped a diaphanous blue scarf, and this
festive costume ended in a full evening dress waist, which bore a
suspicious resemblance to an old shirt waist, with the neck and sleeves
cut out. But Laura flattered herself that her costume, at least, was
impressive; she was reluctant to appear grotesque, even for fun.
Polly's round and serious face was the only thing visible above a
great coat of fur which had been discovered in Miss Bradbury's closet,
and which enveloped plump Polly from head to heels. Penny wore one of
Margery's discarded dancing gowns which had not survived the summer at
Bar Harbor. Over it Margery had pinned a Martha Washington kerchief,
and without plan or seeking the result hoped for by Laura had been
attained for Penelope--she was as picturesque as possible.
Don Dolor came up the driveway with a flourish. It proved him of a
settled and sane mind that he did not rear or plunge as he faced this
graduated line of funny figures, with beautiful Dundee in the front
rank, waving his plume-like tail, and smiling with distended jaws as he
barked wildly over a wide collar of white cambric, which he wore around
his neck like a harlequin.
Miss Bradbury beamed at the group, evidently very glad to see her
family again, from her collie up--or down, for Dundee had taken himself
and his collar to the top step, whence he was barking more madly than
before as Don Dolor stopped. Ralph and Snigs threw up their hats
noiselessly; they would undoubtedly have cheered had not Bob warned
them to be quiet, and to listen to their pæan of welcome. At the tops
of their voices, but in harmony, for Gretta sang alto, and Laura was
equal to sustaining a true tenor, the girls sang Happie's words to the
air of The Battle Hymn of the Republic.
"Behold the glad Archaics in their Ararat array;
They have stolen Mrs. Japhet's clothes (and Shem's and Ham's) away;
They're glad to see their animals come back for holiday:
Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah!
"The solid ground beneath our feet is good--we've floated long.
But Ararat is high and dry, and we have anchored strong;
We're grateful this Thanksgiving tide, and so we sing this song:
Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah!"