There was a postscript. It was like T.O. to put the most of the letter
into the postscript.
"P.S.--Never call me the Talentless One again" (as if they ever had!),
"when I came straight to the Eldorado--tumbled right into it. I've
decided to stay here until you come--please tell my substitute so. I
know she'll be so glad she'll throw up her hat. Bring your sheets and
pillow-cases. Come by way of the X. & Y. R.R. to a place called Placid
Pond."
The three readers, bunched together over the letter, uttered a cry of
delight. "Placid Pond!"--of all the dear, delightful, placid names! The
very look of it on paper was restful; it _sounded_ restful when you
said it over and over--"Placid Pond. Placid Pond. Placid Pond."
"Oh, she's a dear--she's an _artist!_" cried Laura Ann, who
measured all things by their relationship to art. This was an own
cousin!
"Read on--somebody hold the letter still!" Billy cried excitedly. And
they read on: "Take the only road there is to take, and keep on to a
house that's painted green. It will be Emmeline's house, though they
might have named her Sophia, she says, by accident. But you will be glad
she is Emmeline. She has a beautiful daughter that never was born and
never will die--oh, girls, come as quick as ever you can!"
Yours, "The Talented One."
"P.S. No. 2.--Don't climb any stone walls. The stones are not stuck on."
For a tiny space the three girls looked at each other in silence. The
letter in Loraine's hand was a masterpiece, full of enticing mysteries
that beckoned to them to come and find the "answers." What kind of an
Eldorado was this that was called Placid Pond, and was full of
mysteries? How could they wait! They must pack up and go at once!
"'Talented One,' indeed!--she's a genius! See how she's left us to guess
things, instead of explaining them all out in a nice, tame way--oh,
_girls_"--Laura Ann's eyes shone--"won't we have the greatest
time!"
"What I want to know is, who is Emmeline--"
"Yes, who is Emmeline?"
"And who _can_ her daughter _be_? She sounds so lovely and ghostly!"
"Everything sounds lovely and ghostly. When can we go, girls?" This from
practical Loraine. "_I_ can't till after the Fourth."
"Nor I," groaned Billy, dolefully.
"I could, but I shall not--I shall wait for you two," Laura Ann said
quietly.
Loraine turned upon her. "You needn't," she said, "now that you've
signed the compact--you can do whatever you _want_ to now, you
know. Needn't think of anybody but yourself."
"The privilege of being selfish doesn't begin till we get to Eldorado,"
laughed Laura Ann. "You'll see what I do then!"
It was arranged that they should start on the fifth of July. "With our
sheets and pillow-cases," appended Billy. No one thought of writing to
T.O. for further particulars. No one wanted further particulars. The
uncertainly and mystery that enveloped Eldorado was its greatest charm.
They speculated, to be sure, at odd moments, as to the identity of the
person who might have been Sophia but was Emmeline, and they wrestled a
little with the hidden meaning of Postscript Number Two. Why were they
especially bidden not to climb stone walls? And _why_ was the
Talented One "staying over" till they came?
"Why? Why? Why?" chanted Billy, "but don't anybody dare to guess why!
Who wants to know!"
"Not me!" echoed ungrammatically Laura Ann.
While they waited and speculated mildly, and packed and repacked their
things, T.O. lay on the bed in Emmeline Camp's little bedroom and winced
with pain whenever she moved her wounded foot. But she was very happy.
"Peace is in my soul, if not my _sole!_" she thought, a slave still
to the punning habit. She had never been so peaceful in her life. The
little old woman who had befriended her bustled happily in and out of
the little bedroom. She bathed and rubbed the swollen ankle, and smiled
and chattered to the girl at the other end of it. Her "lineaments" were
working a cure, surely.
It had all been decided upon. The B-Hive was to be transplanted for the
summer to the little, green-painted house trailed over with
morning-glory vines and roses. Emmeline Camp had wanted, she said, for
forty years, to go upon a long journey, to visit her brother. Here was
her chance. The small sum she had at last consented to be paid for the
use of her little house would pay her traveling expenses one way, at
least, and John would be glad enough, she said, to pay her fare home,
to get rid of her! Only she was quite able to pay it herself.
"I've kind of hankered to go to see John all these years. Forty years is
quite a spell to hanker, isn't it? But I never felt like leaving the
house behind, and I couldn't take it along very conveniently, so I
stayed to home. And then--my dear, you can laugh as well as not, but
I didn't like to leave Amelia."
"But you might have taken her with--"
"No," seriously, "I couldn't 've taken Amelia. I think, deary, it might
've killed her; she's part of the little house and the morning-glories
and roses. I'd have had to leave Amelia if I'd gone, and it didn't seem
right."
"But now--"
"Now," the little, old woman laughed in her odd, tender way that "went
with" Amelia, "now she'll have plenty of young company--all o' you here
with her. I shall make believe she's coming and going with you, and
it'll be a sight of comfort. Yes, deary, I guess this is going to be my
chance to visit John."
"And our chance to have a summer in the country," completed the Talented
One. "Oh, I think you are--_dear_! Whatever will the other girls
say when I tell them about you!"
One day T.O. remembered the blue pump. She gazed out of the window at
the brown one in the little yard. "Who would have thought," she sighed,
"that I could be so happy without a blue pump!"
"What's that, deary?" The little, old woman was sewing patchwork near by.
"Oh," laughed the girl, "I always _did_ want a pump that was
painted blue. I saw a picture of one once when I was a little mite, and
it impressed me--such a lovely, bright blue! I thought it went
beautifully with the green grass! But I can get along without it, I
guess."
"We have to get along without having things painted to suit us," nodded
the little, old woman philosophically. But she remembered the blue pump.
There was a can of paint out in the shed room, and there was Jane
Cotton's Sam.
Jane Cotton's Sam was a "feature" of Placid Pond--a whole set of
features, T.O. said. He was a lumbering, awkward fellow, well up to the
end of his teens, the only hope of widowed Jane. The Lord had given him
a splendid head, but the Placid Pond people were secretly triumphing in
the knowledge that Sam had failed to pass in his college examinations,
"head or no head." Jane had always boasted so of Sam's brains, and
predicted such a wonderful future for him! All her soul was set on Sam's
success--well, wasn't it time her pride had a fall? Mebbe now she'd see
Sam wasn't much different from other people's boys.
Jane's heart was reported to be broken by the boy's failure, and Sam
went about sulkily defiant. He made a great pretense of lofty
indifference, but maybe he didn't care!--maybe not! Emmeline Camp knew
in her gentle old heart that he cared. She worried about Sam.
All this the Talented One learned, little by little, in the way country
gossip is learned. She learned many other things, too, about the
neighbors--things that she lay and pondered about. It seemed queer to
find out that even a placid little place like this, set among the
peaceful hills, had its tragedies and comedies--its pitiful little
skeletons behind the doors.
"That's Old '61," Mrs. Camp said, pointing to an old figure in the road.
"See him go marching past!--he always marches, as if he heard drums
beating and he was keeping time. I tell 'em he _does_ hear 'em.
He lives all alone up on the edge o' the woods, and folks say he spends
most all his time trying to pick march tunes out on the organ. A few
years ago he got some back pension money, and up and spent it for a
cabinet organ! Dear land! it seemed a pity, when he might have got him
some nice clothes or something sensible. But there he sets and sets over
that organ, trying to pick out tunes! Well,"--the gentle old voice took
on charity--"well, if that's his way of being happy, I s'pose he's got
as good a right to it as I have to--Amelia," a whimsical little smile
lighting up the old face, but underlying it the tenderness that the girl
on the bed had come to look for whenever any reference was made to
Amelia.
"We've all got our idiosyncreases," added Emmeline Camp, "only some of
'em's creased in a little deeper'n others. I guess mine and Old '61's
are pretty considerable deep!"
The early July days were cloudless and full of hot, stinging noises.
T.O. crawled out to lie in the grass under a great tree, and exult in
room and freedom and rest. Her ankle was still very painful, but she
regarded it with philosophical toleration: "You needn't have climbed a
stone wall, need you? Well, then, what have you to complain of? The best
thing you can do is to keep still." Which was, without doubt, the truth.
"Anyhow, it isn't becoming in you to be so puffed up!"
It was decided that Mrs. Camp should start on her trip before the other
girls arrived. Hence, on the morning of the day they had set to come,
the little old woman and her bags and bundles rode away down the dusty
country road. Her lean, brown, crumpled old face had an exalted
expression; the joy of anticipation and the triumph of patient waiting
met in it and blended oddly. It was a great day for Emmeline Camp.
"Good-by, deary. Keep right on rubbing, and don't go to walking 'round.
There's some cookies left in the cooky-crock, and a pie or two on the
shelf to kind of set you going. Take good care o' yourselves."
"And Amelia," whispered the girl, drawing the old face down to her.
"We'll take good care of Amelia."
It was a little lonely after the old stage rumbled away. The Talented
One turned whimsically to Amelia for company. She tried to imagine her,
as the little old woman did, but in vain. She could not conjure up the
sweet, elusive face, the hair, the eyes, the grave little mouth of
Amelia. The little old woman had taken away with her love, the key. She
must have taken Amelia away with her, too, the girl thought, smiling at
her own fancy. So, for company, she must wait until Loraine and Billy
and Laura Ann came, on the further edge of the day. She lay in the cool
grass, and made beatific plans for all the long, lazy days to come. No
hurrying, or worrying--each one for herself, happy in her own way. Only
themselves to think of for the space of a golden summer!
"I am glad she took Amelia," the girl in the grass laughed softly.
"We'd never be able to keep to the Compact with Amelia 'round--Amelia
would never have signed a 'Wicked Compact'!" Which, in the event of
gentle, unsinning Amelia ever having been born, might or might not have
been true. It would have been harder work, reflected the girl in the
grass, for Amelia to have been unsinning and gentle, if she had been born.
Jane Cotton's Sam came lounging down the road, cap over one eye, face
surlily defiant. T.O. watched him with displeasure. So that was the kind
of a boy that gave up? Poor kind of a boy! Why didn't he try it again,
especially when his poor mother's heart was breaking? Didn't he know
that giving up was worse than failing in his examinations? Somebody
ought to tell him--why, he was stopping at Mrs. Camp's little front
gate! He was coming in!
The girl lying in the long grass under the tree sat up hurriedly. Quick,
quick! what was his name? Oh, yes, Sam!
"Good-morning, Sam," she said pleasantly. But the boy, with a mere nod
of his splendidly-modeled head, hurried away toward the tiny barn. The
girl had seen the dark flush that mounted upward from his neck over his
pink and white cheeks.
"Poor thing! He knows _I_ know that he didn't pass--that is the
only 'out' about living in the country: everybody knows everything.
Well, if it makes him blush, then his mother needn't break her heart
_yet_. I like the looks of that boy, if he does go 'round
scowling." Whereupon the Talented One promptly dismissed Jane Cotton's
Sam from her meditations. It did not occur to her to question his right
to be on Mrs. Camp's premises. She lay back in the grass and took up
again the interrupted thread of her musings. By gentle degrees odd
fancies took possession of her.
[Illustration: THE BOY, WITH A MERE NOD, HURRIED AWAY.]
The sprinkling of great, white daisies in the grass beside her--suppose,
now, this minute, they changed into white handkerchiefs, spread out on
a green counter! Then she would have to sell them to passers-by; it was
her business to sell handkerchiefs. Someone was coming marching up the
road--suppose she tried to sell him one, for the fun of it!--to make a
good story for the girls. Laughing, she got up and leaned on the fence.
She "dared" herself to do it. Then, courteously, "Can I sell you
anything in handkerchiefs to-day? Initialed, embroidered--"
The marching feet stopped. Shrewd old eyes studied her face and
twinkled, responsive to the harmless mischief visible in it.
"You got any with flags on--in the corners or anywhere? Or drums on?"
It was Old '61. "Or red, white an' blue ones? I'd like one o'
_them_--I fit in the war," explanatorily.
"Yes?" The saleswoman was not especially interested in the war; it is
not the way with many of her kind to be interested in things.
"I fit clear through--in the Wilderness, and Bull Run, an' plenty more.
They couldn't get rid o' me, the enemy couldn't! No, sir, where there
was marchin' an' shootin', I was bound to be there! They hit me time 'n'
again, but I didn't waste no unnecessary time in hospittles--I had to
git back to the boys."
She was interested now; she forgot she was to sell him a handkerchief.
"Go on," she said.
"It was great! You ought to heard the drums an' smelt the smoke, an'
felt your feet marchin' under you, an' your knapsack poundin' your
back--yes, sir, an' bein' hungry an' thirsty an' wore out! You'd ought
to seen how ragged the boys got, an' heard 'em whistlin' 'Through
Georgy' while they sewed on patches--oh, you'd ought to _whistled_
'Through Georgy'!"
The girl, watching the kindled old face, saw a shadow creep over it.
"I useter--I useter--but someway I've lost it. It's pretty hard to've
_marched_ through Georgy an' forgot the tune about. Some days I
'most get holt of it again--I thought I could, on the organ, but I
can't, not the hull of it. Someway I've lost it--it's pretty hard. It
ha'nts me--if you ever be'n ha'nted, you know how bad it is."
No, the girl who was leaning on the fence had never been ha'nted, but
her eyes were wide with pity for the old soul who had marched through
Georgia and forgotten the tune.
"Some days I 'most ketch it. I don't suppose"--the old voice halted
diffidently--"I don't suppose _you'd_ whistle it, would you? Jest
through once--"
But she could not whistle even once "Through Georgia." "I'm so sorry!"
she cried. "I can't whistle, or sing, or anything. I wish I could!"
She wished she were Billy; Billy could have done it.
Old '61 marched on, up the dusty road, and the girl went back to her
tree. She had not sold any daisy-handkerchiefs, but she had her story to
tell the girls. She lay in the grass thinking of it. Once or twice she
pursed her lips and made a ludicrous ineffectual attempt to whistle, but
she did not smile. Jane Cotton's Sam clicked the gate, going out, but
she did not notice. When she did at last look up, and her gaze wandered
over the little yard aimlessly, she suddenly uttered a little note of
surprise.
"Why!" she cried.